LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Clear as Crystal. 



A Series of Talks to Children on the Crystal, given 

in the West Denver Congregational Church in 

Denver, Colorado, during 1886 and 1887. 



By REV. R. X. CROSS, 



I U * Author of Home Duties. 




FLEMING H. REVELL. 

chicago: i new york: 

148 and 150 Madison Street, | 148 and 150 Nassau Street. 

Publisher of Evangelical Literature. 



fag Library 
w Congress 

WASHINGTON 



*#t 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year i88f,-. 

By F. H. REVELL, 

In the Office of the Librarian, at Washington, D. C. 



TO THE MEMOKY OP MY MOTHEB 

MRS. SOPHIA MURDOCK CROSS, 

who taught me 
to love the True, the 
Beautiful, and the Good; 
whose prayers and teachings 
have followed me through life; 
who bore in her earthly life all the 
fruits of the Spirit; whose eyes for these 
-many years have gazed on the matchless 
gems in the walls of the New Jeru- » 
salem, and whose feet will tread 
forever the golden streets, is 
this book, that speaks of 
earthly gems and heav- 
enly graces, inscribed 
by her son, 

—The Author. 



PREFACE. 

In the Spring of 1887, the author of this book saw in some 
paper that Kev. J. G. Merrill, then of Davenport, la., was 
preaching five minute sermons to the children of his congre- 
gation every Sunday morning. He at once adopted the prac- 
tice for himself, and has adhered to it ever since, believing it 
to be, on the whole, the most satisfactory way of preaching 
to children. 

Having been, in an amateur fashion, a collector of min- 
erals from boyhood, it occurred to him that he could get 
some sermons for the children out of the crystals that he was 
collecting in the Rocky Mountains, and gathering by ex- 
change from ail over the world, and, perhaps, at the same 
time, interest the young in a pleasant branch of natural his- 
tory, and show them that science and religion are closely 
allied. 

At first it was a series of ten sermons, but, on repeating it 
a few years later, the series gradually grew (see sermon 
number forty) until it reached fifty or more, and extended over 
more than a year of time. Use has been made, not only of 
facts about crystals, but also of experiences in hunting for 
crystals, especially in the second part. The sermons are not 
arranged entirely in the order in which they were delivered. 
If there is any repetition of thought or illustration, it is 
mainly owing to the many months intervening between the 
preparation of the sermons that show such repetition. 

There are three classes of persons, besides personal friends, 
who, we hope, will read this book. 

First, the children, for whom it was specially prepared; 
not the youngest children, but those from ten to sixteen 



VI ' PREFACE. 

years of age. Surely no one can hesitate to put into their 
hands a book that draws moral and spiritual lessons from the 
facts of nature. 

Second, amateur mineralogists and young collectors. There 
are now many such scattered over the land, in Agassiz Associ- 
ations and other natural history societies. From these young 
people will come many of the scientists of the future, and 
we shall esteem it a good work done if the thoughts of any 
such can be turned, by means of a study that they delight in, 
towards moral truths and spiritual laws, towards God and His 
Son, Jesus Christ. 

Third, ministers and Sunday school teachers who are on the 
lookout for fresh illustrations from nature with which to im- 
press upon the young the truths of God's words. So far as 
we know, the field that we have explored is comparatively a 
fresh one, so far as its use for illustrations is concerned. 
Newton, in his Bible Jewels, treats only of precious stones, 
and then only, or mainly, of the fanciful qualities that have 
been attributed to them. Euskin, iD his Ethics of the Dust, 
gives in a scattered and fragmentary way a few, but only a 
few, of the lessons that the crystals teach. Mineralogy is 
only one of the many branches of natural history, and who- 
ever makes one of those branches a specialty will, if he is on 
the lookout for them, find illustrative uses for all the facts 
and laws of his favorite science. 

To the many young friends who have listened to these 
sermons, and to all who may read this book, we bring this 
crystal wreath as a humble contribution towards the crowning 
of Christ as Lord of all. Pronounce crystal as though it 
were spelled Christ-all, and you have the key to what our 
desire and aim has been in all these children's sermons. 

June, 1887. R. T. C. 



CONTENTS. 

PART I. 

Chapter. Page. 

I. — Crystals, ----- 9 

II.— Thinking aboot God, - - - 12 

III. — Loving the Beautiful, - - 16 

IV. — Clear Minds and Souls, - - - 20 

V. — Reflecting the Light, 24 

VI. — Alike, Yet not Alike, - - - 27 

VII.— Crystals that Endure Hardness, - 80 

VIII.— Working and Praying for Good Things, 34 

IX.— Getting Things that Will Endure, 38 

X. — A Jewel in Christ's Diadem, - 41 

XL— Be Genuine, - - - - 45 

XII.— Quality, not Quantity, - - 50 

XIII. — Beauty out of Baseness, - - - 54 

XIV. — Aiming at Perfection, 58 

XV.— A Law Within Us, - - - - 61 

XVI.— Glorify Your Surroundings, - 65 

XVII.— The Great Healer, - - - 69 

XVIII.— Crystal Inclusions, 73 

XIX.— Christ on Our Foreheads, - - 77 

XX.— Treed with Fire, - - - 81 

XXL — Crystals and Electricity, - - 86 

XXII. — All is not Gold that Glitters, - 90 

XXIII. — Crystals that Shine in the Dark, - 94 

XXIV. — Decayed Crystals, 98 

XXV.— Crystals of Salt, - - - - 102 



10 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL 

make use of the things your friends had seen in 
order to give them an idea of the things which they 
had not seen. 

John had a vision of heaven ; and he was told to 
write it in a book, so that God's people in this world 
might get some idea of the beauty and glory of the 
home to which they were journeying. In order to 
do this he had to compare it with the beautiful things 
of this world, and in his description he made more 
use of crystals and precious stones than of any other 
beautiful things. 

In describing the holy city he says that it is made 
of pure gold ; each of the twelve gates is one great 
pearl, and each of the twelve foundations of the 
wall is made of precious stone, jasper, sapphire, 
chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, 
beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth, and amethyst. 

He also sa} T s that ' ' before the throne there was 
a sea of glass like unto crystal. " And he says that the 
light of the New Jerusalem was " like unto a stone 
most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as 
crystal." And then he says that he was showed a 
" pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, pro- 
ceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb." 
A sea of glass, the light, and a river of water — all 
as clear as crystal ! What a beautiful, sparkling, 
crystalline place it must be ! I, for one, am anxious 
to go there, and you are too, are you not I 



CRYSTALS. 11 

But John tells us in Kevelation that it is not pos 
sible for any person or anything that is unclean, or 
that works an abomination, or that makes a lie, to 
enter that place. Only they whose names are writ- 
ten in the Lamb's Book of Life, and who keep his 
commandments, have a right to the Tree of Life. 
All such can pass right through the gates. ISTo one 
will hinder them. But on the outside are the dogs, 
and the sorceres, and the fornicators, and the mur- 
derers, and the idolaters, and everyone that loveth 
and maketh a he. 

The word crystal is from a word that means ice. 
When clear quartz crystals were first found, thou- 
sands of years ago, people thought that they were a 
very hard kind of ice, and so they called them 
"krust alios,'' a word which in their language meant 
ice. Now we call any regular form of any mineral 
a crystal. 

Some crystals are opaque, not letting any light 
through them ; some are smoky, and some are very 
clear, just like clear glass. Our text is a clear crys- 
tal, not a smoky one. We will look at it, and into 
it, and through it, and around it ; we will visit its 
home in the rocks, and learn all we can about it, and 
we will see how many useful lessons we can learn, 
and how many instructive sermons we can get, out 
of the crystal. 



CHAPTER II. 

THINKING ABOUT GOD. 

" A book of remembrance was written before Mm for them * * * 
that thought upon his name." — Malachi iii. : 16. 

One of the first lessons which we learn from the 
clear crystal is to think about God. It should make 
us think of God because God made it. Man had 
nothing to do with the making of this crystal. Some- 
times persons look at crystals like this in my collec- 
tion and they say : ' ' Why, how nicely those sides are 
polished ! Where did you get the work done I " 
They will hardly believe me when I tell them that I 
dug the crystals out of the ground just as they are. 

They were polished thousands or millions of years 
ago in Nature's great lapidary. God polished the 
sides far smoother than man can polish them, and 
he made all the regular angles between the sides. 

Although he made millions of these crystals, just 
as he made millions of birds, yet I suppose he thought 
about this one when he made it, just as he thinks 
about every bird that he makes, and is with every 
sparrow, Christ says, that falls to the ground. 

When we see a wonderful machine or a beautiful 
(12) 



THINKING ABOUT GOD. 13 

work of art, we naturally think of the person who 
made it. If you see a beautiful picture hanging on 
the wall, you say to yourself : "I wonder who 
painted it." If you see a fine building you think of 
the one who planned it and built it. If you read a 
book that giyes you pleasure, you say: "Who 
wrote this book ? " 

If you happen to be acquainted with the person 
who painted the picture, or planned the building, or 
wrote the book, you are more apt to think of him 
when you see it, even if you do not know him very 
well. When I see the telephone used I think of the 
man who invented it, because I was somewhat 
acquainted with him years ago. When I see certain 
books in my library, I think of the men who wrote 
them, because I knew those men very well. 

Xow when I see this crystal, I say to myself : 
i ' God made this, the mighty God who made the 
heavens and the earth, and I have not only heard of 
Him, but I know Him, and He is my Friend, and 
He made this for me. His thought passed through 
it to me, and my thought shall pass through it back 
to Him. 

A little boy was away from home once. His 
father was an artist, and he painted a beautiful little 
picture of the boy's home and sent it to him, so that 
when he saw it he might be led to think of his home 
and also of his father. The boy was pleased to 



14 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

receive it ; he hung it up in his room, and he said to 
his friends, "My father painted this picture, and it 
is a picture of my beautiful home." 

So my father in heaven made this clear crystal 
and gave it to me as a picture, a little picture on a 
small scale, of that sea of glass, that river of water 
of life, and that pure light, in the New Jerusalem, 
our heavenly home. And when I see it, I not only 
think of heaven, but of my heavenly Father also. 

Perhaps some boy or girl says : "I wish I had 
that crystal so that I could be reminded of heaven 
and of God." Ah! but it is not the clear crystal 
alone, but every beautiful thing, that ought to 
remind us of heaven and God. The clear sky that 
arches above us, the twinkling stars that stud the 
vault of heaven, the snow that wraps the earth in 
white, the brook that sings of its home in the moun- 
tains, the flower that turns its face heavenward, the 
butterfly that basks in the sun, the green grass that 
carpets the earth, the bright, happy face of a friend,— 
all are beautiful. God made them all and they all 
ought to make us think of Him. 

I have an agate, on one polished face of which there 
is a natural image that looks just like the pictures 
that we commonly see of the Virgin Mary. "When 
a person looks at it he thinks of her. But on every 
one of the eighteen faces of this crystal I think I 
can see the reflection of God's face. And I see it 



THINKING ABOUT GOD. 15 

everywhere in nature. So that not only in the crys- 
tal, but in all the works of nature, I look through 
nature up to nature's Grocl. And when I think of 
Him, knowing that I am poor and needy, I remem- 
ber with great gladness what the psalmist says : 
"The Lord thinketh upon me." and I remember, 
too, with gladness, what the text teaches, that He 
writes my name in a book, a book of remembrance 
for those who think upon his name. 

"Lord, I care not for riches, 

Neither silver nor gold ; 
I would make sure of heaven, 

I would enter the fold. 
In the book of Thy Kingdom, 

With its pages so fair, 
Tell me, Jesus, my saviour, 

Is my name written there. 

Oh ! that beautiful city, 

With its mansions of light, 
With its glorified beings, 

In pure garments'of white ; 
Where no evil thing cometh, 

To despoil what is fair, 
Where the angels are watching ; 

Yes, my name's written there." 



CHAPTER III. 

LOVING THE BEAUTIFUL. 

"Whatsoever things are lovely * * * Think on those things." 
—Phil. iv. : 8. 

" Clear as crystal" is our text for this whole se- 
ries of sermons. But we want a special text for 
each lesson. Oar next lesson that we learn from the 
crystal is to love the oeautiful, and our text is 
"Whatsoever things are lovely, think on those 
things. " 

John would not have used the clear crystal in de- 
scribing heaven for us if he had not admired it and 
thought that it was beautiful. And I imagine that 
when he saw one of these crystals, after having that 
vision of heaven, he would look at it with admira- 
tion, and exclaim : " O how beautiful ! It reminds 
me of that sea of glass, that river of water of life, 
and that wondrous light in the New Jerusalem." 

The text tells us to think about those things that 
are lovely. The clear crystal is lovely, and therefore 
we ought to think about it and admire it. God wants 
us to love all the beautiful things that he has made. 
What did he make them beautiful for if he did not 
(16) 



LOVING THE BEAUTIFUL. 17 

expect us to love them, with that faculty, the love 
of the beautiful, which he has put into our natures ( 

He has filled the earth with beautiful things. 
They are all around us everywhere. And if we learn 
to admire and love the beautiful stars, the beautiful 
sunlight and moonlight, the beautiful rainbow, the 
beautiful clouds, the beautiful mountains and hills 
and prairies, the beautiful trees and flowers and grass, 
the beautiful birds, the beautiful crystals, and all 
other beautiful things, we shall have a source of 
joy and innocent pleasure that we can draw upon at 
any time. 

Last year I read a recipe for fixing a beautiful bit 
of scenery in the mind so that you can call it up at 
any time. You are to look at it carefully, and then 
shut your eyes and think the image of it on the 
brain, and then repeat the process two or three times.. 

Soon after reading this recipe I made use of it on 
a trip of five hundred miles through some of the 
grandest scenery on the continent. And now I can 
shut my eyes, open my brain album, and enjoy all 
over again the many beautiful things that I saw. 

If you will learn to love the beautiful, and fill 
your brain album with beautiful pictures, you can 
enjoy them at any time, even in the dark. A dis- 
tinguished traveler became blind in his old age, but 
he would sit in his chair for hours and enjoy the 
mental vision of great cities and wonderful things 



18 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

that he had seen in his travels, and that he had im- 
pressed on his mind. 

But we must learn to see the inner beauty of 
beautiful things. You know what concealed pic- 
tures are. When you first look at one you see only 
a common picture, if you look closer you see, so 
plainly that you wonder how you ever missed it, the 
outline of an animal, or a man, or something else. 
If God is in your heart every beautiful thing will be 
his photograph ; he will be its inner beauty, its con- 
cealed picture, visible to your eyes whether others 
see it or not. 

We have just one perfect photograph of God, 
Jesus, the Son of God, who is his express image, in 
whom dwells all the fullness of the God-head bodily. 
Other things are beautiful but Christ is altogether 
lovely. 

I do not think that anyone really loves the light, 
if at the same time he hates the sun. And I do not 
think that anyone really loves beautiful things, if at 
the same time he sees no beauty in Christ. 

If we learn to love beautiful things in this life, it 
will help prepare us to enjoy heaven, for heaven is a 
wonderfully beautiful place. It is full of beautiful 
things, and the inner beauty of them all is the Lord 
of glory. The following poem tells us of twenty-four 
beautiful things in heaven : 



L VINO THE BE A UT1 FUL. 19 

"Beautiful Zion built above ! 
Beautiful city that I love ! 
Beautiful gates of pearly white ! 
Beautiful temple, God its light ! 

Beautiful trees forever there ! 
Beautiful fruits they always bear ! 
Beautiful rivers gliding by ! 
Beautiful fountains, never dry ! 

Beautiful light without the sun ! 
Beautiful day revolving on ! 
Beautiful worlds on worlds untold ! 
Beautiful streets of shining gold ! 

Beautiful heaven where all is light ! 
Beautiful angels clothed in white ! 
Beautiful songs that never tire ! 
Beautiful harps through all the choir ! 

Beautiful crowns on every brow ! 
Beautiful palms the conquerors show ! 
Beautiful robes the ransomed wear ! 
Beautiful all who enter there ! 

Beautiful throne for God the Lamb ! 
Beautiful seats at God's right hand ! 
Beautiful rest, all wanderings cease ! 
Beautiful home of perfect peace V 

And this beautiful crystal in my hand is one of 
the things that God told John to use to help give us 
an idea of that beautiful place. And this is one of 
the lessons that the clear crystal teaches us — to love 
the oecmtiful. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CLEAR MINDS AND SOULS. 

"Kee r p thyself pure." — 1 Timothy v. : 22. 

Another lesson to learn from the clear crystal is 
that our minds and souls should he as clear as the 
crystal. 

Some crystals are opaque ; that is, you cannot see 
any light through them. If you hold them up to 
the sun they will not let one of his bright rays pass 
through. Other crystals are what is called trans- 
lucent. They let a little light through, but you can- 
not see any distinct image. Sometimes they are filled 
with impurities, like coal, or iron, or clay, or some 
other substance which prevent their being clear. 
Other crystals are transparent, that is they are clear 
like glass. They not only let rays of light pass 
through, but you can see distinct images through 
them. 

Some people's minds are opaque. They are like 
muddy water. The light cannot get into them, nor 
through them. " Clear as mud" is an expression 
used of such persons. They do not have clear 
thoughts or ideas. 

(20) 



CLEAR MINDS AND SOULS. 21 

Ask some boys and girls about the lessons that 
they have pretended to study, and they cannot give 
you a clear answer, which shows that they have no 
clear thoughts. The stream of knowledge in their 
minds is muddy. How many of you have clear 
ideas about the Sunday-school lessons, and are able 
to give clear answers to the questions that are asked 
by your teachers ? In everything which you study 
you should have clear ideas, clear thoughts, and clear 
language in which to express them. All should be 
as clear as the clearest crystal. 

Did you ever see the old fashioned panes of glass 
that were formerly put into windows ? They dis- 
torted everything. As you looked through them 
every straight thing appeared crooked. Children 
looked like men, and men looked like children ; 
horses looked like dogs, and dogs looked like ele- 
phants. They twisted things out of their right size 
and shape. 

Some people's minds do the same thing. They 
give a twist to everything that passes through them. 
Tell them a straight story, and in telling it to the 
next person they put several twists into it. Let a 
story pass through three such minds, and you would 
not know it, just as I would not know your face if I 
looked at it through two or three of those panes of 
glass. 

I was with some children lately, and helped them 



22 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

play the game of Scandal, as it is called. I whispered 
to one of them the sentence : " Pike's Peak is more 
than fourteen thousand feet high every day." Each 
one tried to whisper it correctly to his neighbor, but 
when it came back to me it was as follows : c ' John 
said that Mary eat a piece of Pike ? s Peak every day. M 
Some of the children had twisted it when they sup- 
posed that they were repeating it correctly. 

Muddy minds are bad enough, but there is some- 
thing worse than that — muddy souls. I have known 
some boys and girls who had such souls. You could 
not see through them. They did not let in or give 
out any light. In such souls the mud is stirred up 
from the bottom. And just as you find slimy snakes, 
and croaking frogs, and poisonous insects, in muddy 
stagnant water ; so falsehoods and lies and deceits 
and impure thoughts and wicked desires, take refuge 
in such souls. 

I know other boys and girls whose souls are as clear 
as this crystal. You can look into their clear eyes, 
right down into the liquid depths of their clear, 
bright, truthful, honest souls. There is no mud, no 
impurity, no falsehood, no deceit, nothing opaque, 
no twisting and turning, but all is transparent and 
clear as the sunlight. Those are the boys and girls 
that we love, and that everybody loves. They are 
honest and truthful, and willing that others should 
read their hearts. 



CLEAR MINDS AND SOULS. 23 

But suppose your soul is already impure and 
muddy, how can it be made clean and pure ? Dayid 
asked and answered that question three thousand 
years ago : c ' Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse 
his way \ By taking heed thereto according to thy 
word. " Put your souls into the hands of Jesus and 
let him cleanse it. Ask him to wash your soul, and 
it will be whiter than snow and clearer than the 
clearest crystal. 

To clarify means to make clear, to purify. I haye 
read that blood is sometimes used in clarifying sugar 
and other articles to get the impurities out of them. 
The blood of Christ, and that alone, will thoroughly 
cleanse our souls and make them clean and pure. 



CHAPTER V. 

REFLECTING THE LIGHT. 

"Among whom ye shine as lights in the world."— Phillip- 
pians ii.: 15. 

Our fifth lesson from the clear crystal is to reflect 
the light. This crystal is clear, that is, it permits 
the rays of light to pass through so that you can see 
objects through it. But it also reflects the light ; 
that is it throws some of it off from its surface. A 
crystal can be seen much farther than a pebble, be- 
cause it has a smooth surface to reflect the light 
from. 

A man told me that he saw the sun reflected from 
a bright spot away up on the side of a mountain. 
He climbed to it and found a crystal. It was re- 
flecting the light of the sun, and thus shining as a 
light among the countless pebbles around it. 

When we dig these clear crystals out of the 
ground it is easy to see them in the dirt because 
they shine so, reflecting the light as soon as it strikes 
them, though they have been lying in the dark 
earth for ages. Some of them sparkle like the dia- 
mond, and they sparkled as soon as they were taken 
out of the ground. 

(24) 



REFLECTING THE LIGHT. 25 

If you go into a cave that has crystals on the side 
of its walls, they will sparkle brilliantly and reflect 
the light that you hold in your hand. Xear the 
summit of Mount Lincoln I went once into a mine 
that was about fourteen thousand feet above the sea. 
The sides of the tunnel were covered with millions 
of frost crystals, some of them an inch or more in 
length. Xo words can describe their wondrous 
beauty, as they reflected the light of our torches 
from a million "surfaces. 

Why is it light when the moon shines ? Because 
the moon reflects to us the light of the sun that falls 
upon it. Do you know who is the light of the 
world? It is Jesus. "God, who commandeth the 
light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our 
hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the 
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." And 
just as God has put the moon in the sky to reflect to us 
the light of the sun after it has set, so he has put us 
here as lights in the world. We are here to shine, to 
shine by reflecting the light of God as seen in the 
face of Jesus. Are we doing this ? Do our faces 
ever shine with the light of Christs love \ Are our 
lives all aglow with that wondrous light ? 

This crystal has eighteen sides, and it reflects the 
light from every one of them, so that whatever way 
you turn it you see the light reflected from it. So 
ought we to reflect the light from every part of us. 



26 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

I know one boy, who is generous and friendly, but 
he is not truthful or honest. You get the light from 
one side of him, but not from every side. I know a 
girl who is amiable and truthful, but she is lazy and 
slovenly. She does not reflect the light from every 
side. One person loves his friends and is ready to 
do anything for them, but he hates his enemies, and 
from that side of his life he does not reflect Christ's 
light. Such persons are like this other crystal, that 
has only one or two sides that reflect the light. The 
other sides are coarse, and rough, and rusty. 

Africa is called the 'Dark Continent,' because it is 
so full of moral darkness. It is covered with an 
Egyptian darkness of sin. But look ! Away in the 
center of that continent I see a bright light, like 
the shining of a clear crystal up the mountain side. 
Four boys are being burned to death — it was only 
last year — for becoming Christians. Is it the 
light of the burning wood that I see? No, that 
light could not reach so far. It is the light of their 
faith, the light of Christ reflected through dark-hued 
faces from souls washed whiter than snow. And I 
can almost hear their voices as they sing the praises 
of Christ, while the fire is doing its dreadful work. 
Their light shines across the ocean to us, and it shall 
shine down the centuries, a bright spot in her dark 
past, to which redeemed Africa shall look back. 



CHAPTER VI. 

ALIKE, YET NOT ALIKE. 

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, 
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." — 
Galatians v. : 22. 

Alike yet not alike, or unity in variety, is our 
next lesson from the crystal. This crystal has 
eighteen regular sides, and every quartz crystal that 
you find anywhere in the world, if it is complete, 
has at least eighteen sides, six on the prism, and 
six on each of the pyramids at the end of the crystal. 
And the angles between the sides are always the 
same. 

In these respects all quartz crystals are alike, and 
yet in other things no two are exactly alike — just as 
no two leaves in all the forests are exactly alike — 
just as no two insects or animals are exactly alike — 
just as no two human faces are exactly alike. I have 
had several thousand clear quartz crystals and I 
never found two exactly alike, though they are all 
like each other in some things. 

Sometimes one face of the crystal is very large, 
while the other next to it is very small, crowded 
(27) 



28 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

clown perhaps to so small a space that it seems like 
a point and you cannot see it without the microscope. 
Yet if you look close you will always find it. 

Now everyone of us ought to have eighteen sides 
to our Christian character, eighteen ways at least in 
which love manifests itself, eighteen polished sur- 
faces from which we shall reflect the light of the 
Sun of righteousness. 

I do not say but that there may be more than 
eighteen, but if there were just that number I think 
we could give them these names : joy, peace, long- 
suflering, gentleness, goodness, faith, hope, meek- 
ness, temperance, truth, honesty, fidelity, obedience, 
humility, chastity, benevolence, forgiveness, piety. 

Do you say that I have left out the most import- 
ant one, love ? I have left it out in name but not in 
reality, for it is in all the others. These are only 
eighteen different names of love, eighteen surfaces 
from which love is reflected, or eighteen windows 
from which it shines out of the soul, sending its 
bright rays upward and outward and downward. 

We ought to have every one of these windows for 
love to shine out of, and if we are Christians we will 
have every one, and more even than I have named. 
But some of them are very apt to be crowded almost 
off, crowded down to so small a space that you would 
think it was not there unless you looked very closely. 
Some persons have a great deal of faith ; their faith 



ALIKE, YET NOT ALIKE. 29 

window toward heaven is large ; but the meekness 
window toward their fellow-men is small. Some 
are very honest, but not very generous, and some 
are very generous but not ver}^ honest. Some peo- 
ple have a large surface for temperance, but only a 
small one for gentleness. Others are gentle but not 
very temperate. 

We ought not to let any Christian grace be 
crowded off, or crowded down to a point. None of 
our soul windows are too large, but a good many 
of them are too small. We should strive not to re- 
duce the large ones, but to enlarge the small ones. 
If you have any fault or besetting sin it shows that 
one of your soul windows is altogether too small ; 
it needs enlarging. We need not try, or expect, to 
be all alike in everything, but we may all try and 
expect to be more like our Lord and Savior, Jesus 
Christ. 



CHAPTER VII. 

CRYSTALS THAT ENDURE HARDNESS. 

"Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus 
Christ."— II. Timothy ii.: 3. 

Our next lesson from the crystal is about endur- 
ing hardness. This quartz crystal is hard, not so 
hard as the diamond or sapphire, but harder than 
most crystals. I can easily scratch glass with it, 
and such crystals are often used in cutting glass. 

Some crystals are very soft. You can easily 
scratch a crystal of gypsum with your finger nail. 
You can easily cut a crystal of lime with your knife. 
But this quartz crystal will turn the edge of your 
knife every time. It is able to endure much hard 
usage. 

And so ought we to be. We should endure hard- 
ness as good soldiers. 

1. Physically, or with the body. I like to see 
boys and girls with good strong, healthy bodies, 
bodies that are able to endure hard work and hard 
fare if need be. I rejoice in boys and girls that can 
eat well and sleep well, study hard and work hard 

and play hard. 

(30) 



CR YS TA LS TEA T END UBE HA RDNESS. 31 

Sometines we cannot help having weak bodies, 
but we can generally make them much stronger than 
they are by taking care of them as we ought, by 
being temperate and frugal, by keeping good hours, 
and by taking daily exercise. 

From my study window I can see the school 
children at play, and as long as they are fair in their 
games and keep good natured, I like to see them 
play, and play with their might, for I know that the 
play will help to make them healthy and strong. 

2. We should be able to endure hardness mentally, 
or with the mind. We ought to have good strong 
minds, minds that are not easily scratched, minds 
that can grapple with dificult questions and wrestle 
with hard problems and conquer them. 

When I see the boys and girls rush from the play 
ground into the school room I think to myself : They 
have been exercising their bodies and now they are 
going to exercise and strengthen their minds. I 
wonder who of them can take hold of a real hard 
lesson and master it. They are the ones who will 
succeed in life. They will endure hardness in the 
battle of life. They will wrestle with the hard 
problems of life, and conquer them, and carry off 
the prizes. 

Now it is a good thing to be able to endure hard- 
ness with the body and the mind, but another thing 
is better, and that is 



32 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

3. To endure hardness spiritually, or with the 
soul. We should have souls that are strong, a moral 
character that cannot be scratched by any of the 
sins or temptations of the world. 

We should be able to stand up in the presence of 
temptation and say JVo, " a good round hearty JYo." 
We should say : ' ' That thing is wrong and I will 
not do it." We can say it politely and yet say it 
with emphasis if necessary. John B. Gough used 
to tell of a Frenchman who signed the pledge. If 
anyone asked him to drink he said politely : " No, I 
tank you." If they asked him the second time he 
said firmly: " No sir." If they ventured to ask 
him again he would reply with great emphasis : ' 'NO 
SIR EE." It was not an easy thing to scratch his 
pledge. 

If you put crystals of quartz, calcite, fluorite, and 
gypsum, into a box and shake them hard, the quartz 
crystals are the only ones that will come out without 
scratches. They are composed of almost pure silica, 
and silica is strong. It is a source of strength, whether 
found in the crystal, or in the stalk of wheat, or on 
the sandy beach that beats back the ocean waves, or 
in the granite mountain peaks. 

Christ is our strength. In the busy shaking up 
and jostling of this life, in the conflict with tempta- 
tions and trial, many souls get sadly bruised and 
scratched. But those who have Christ within them, 



CR YS TALS TEA T END UBE HARDNESS. 33 

-who "stand in his strength alone/' the} x are able to 
■endure hardness ; they are good soldiers of Jesus 
Christ. 

All minerals are arranged according to their hard- 
ness on a scale of ten. Quartz is seven; topaz is 
eight ; sapphire is nine, and the diamond is ten. In 
our power to resist temptations and endure hardness 
we ought to try to be number ten, but we cannot be 
unless Christ is enthroned in our hearts. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

WORKING AND PRAYING FOR GOOD THINGS. 

" If thou seekest her as silver, and seekest far her as for hid 
treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord 
and find the knowledge of God." — Proverbs ii. : 4, 5. 

Another crystal lesson is that to get a thing worth 
keeping we must work and pray for it" How do 
you suppose I obtained rny clear crystals ? Did I 
pick them up in the street ? No, no more than you 
can pick up nuggets of gold in the streets of Denver. 
Some people think that if they get into the moun- 
tains they can pick up choice crystals anywhere, but 
that is a great mistake. You might travel many 
miles in the mountains without seeing a stone that 
was worth picking up. 

I will tell you how I found some of my crystals, 
those fine quartz crystals from New York State for 
example. I rode sixty miles on the cars, then six 
miles in a stage, then walked a mile, then I took a 
hoe or sharp stick and dug a good many hours in 
the dirt and among the rocks. My hands were 
scratched by the sharp stones ; my face and clothes 
were covered with dirt ; I became weary and hun- 
gry and thirsty. It took hard work. 
(34) 



WORKING AND PRATING FOR GOOD THINGS. 35 

I could tell you a good many stories of long 
tramps and hard work in the mountains to find crys- 
tals. If you would find beautiful crystals you must 
not be afraid of the dirt, nor of hard digging, nor 
of long tramps, nor of scratched hands, nor of 
hunger and thirst. But you are more than paid for 
all these things when you see the beautiful crystals 
rolling out of the dirt, or bursting out of their strong- 
prison cells. 

And I think that if you would find the beautiful 
crystals that God has made, and which he hides, or 
reveals, it is a good thing to pray as well as dig. 
One person asked another how it was that he suc- 
ceeded in finding so many fine crystals when he 
went to hunt for them. He replied like this : "When 
I go after the crystals I pray over the matter. I ask 
God to help me find some of the beautiful things 
that he has made, things that I admire all the more 
because my heavenly Father made them, and that I 
will try to use to his glory ; and then after praying 
over it I dig just as hard as I can." 

It would not do any good to pray for them unless 
he was also willing to hunt and dig. God helps 
those who help themselves. "Trust in God and 
keep your powder dry." Pray hard and dig hard. 

And this rule applies to any good thing that we 
are striving after. Do you want an education? 
Pray for it. Ask God to help you to get it, to open 



36 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

the way for you to secure it, and then work and dig 
for it just as hard as you can. 

Have you some plan that you want to carry out ? 
Take it to the Lord, in prayer, and if you are satis- 
lied that it is according to his will, then work for it 
just as hard as you can, and God will work with you. 
Leave no stone unturned and God will turn the big 
stones. 

Do you want to understand that wondrous thing, 
the fear of the Lord? Do you wish to find that 
precious gem, the knowledge of God \ " Seek her as 
silver and search for her as hid treasure." How 
earnest men are in seeking for silver and gold ! What 
long journeys they take ! AYhat privations they 
endure, — loneliness, hunger, thirst, and weariness ! 
What dangers they encounter — the falling rock, the 
swollen streams, the snow slide, wild beasts and 
wilder men ! How patient they are, hunting some- 
times for years before they find airything ! 

And do you know how men search for hid treas- 
ures ? If you had a hundred acre lot and some one 
should start the story that a thousand dollars were 
buried somewhere within its limits, the lot would 
soon be all spaded up, so eager would men be to find 
the hid treasure. Christ says that if a man finds a 
treasure hid in a field, he is willing to go and sell all 
that he has to buy that field, and he compares it to 
the kingdom of God. 



WORKING AND PRAYING FOR GOOD THINGS. 37 

Do you want the kingdom of God within you ? 
Do you want something more precious than rubies 
and better than gold ? Do you want a hope that is 
sure and steadfast ? Do you want an experience 
that sparkles with the light of heaven % Do you 
want a necklace of beautiful pearls, each pearl a 
Christian grace ? Do you want a Christian character 
that is as clear as crystal ? In short do you want 
salvation ? Pray for it, and lay hold of the great 
salvation that God has provided. " Believe in the 
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved," and 
then, "Work out your salvation with fear and 
trembling." 



CHAPTER IX. 

GETTING THINGS THAT WILL ENDUKE. 

" Charity never faileth." — I. Cor. xiii. : 8. 

Our next lesson from the crystal is that we should 
get those things that will endure, those that will not 
speedily perish. 

Suppose on some holiday I form a little party and 
ask you to go with me on an excursion. There are 
three things that we can do, three plans to choose 
from. First, we can go into a large meadow and 
pick flowers. It will be easy work ; we will enjoy 
it ; the flowers will smell very sweetly, and we can 
carry beautiful bouquets to our friends. It will all 
be very pleasant and nice, but the flowers will not 
last long. In a day or two they will wilt and lose 
their beauty, and we shall have to throw them away 
as withered, useless, decaying things. If we trans- 
plant them the flowers will last only a few days or 
weeks, and then there will be no more blossoms un- 
til next year. 

The next thing that we can do is to go up on the 
mountain side, or into one of the canons, among the 
rocks and thorns, and pick berries. This is harder 
(38) 



GETTING THINGS THAT WILL ENDTJRE. 39 

work than picking flowers. The berries are very 
nice however ; they are pretty to look at, and they 
taste, oh ! so good ! But after we have eaten them 
they are gone, and we cannot enjoy them any longer. 

The other thing that we can do, and the thing 
that I vote for, is to go to a certain place and dig, or 
blast, for crystals. It will be much harder work than 
gathering flowers or picking berries. The difference 
between the three tilings is shown by the three words, 
gathering, picking, digging. But if you get some 
nice crystals you get something that will not fade or 
perish, as the flowers and berries do. They will be 
things of beauty that will be joys forever. If this 
clear, sparkling crystal is not lost, it will be looked 
at and admired for hundreds of years to come. So 
I would rather dig crystals than gather flowers or 
pick berries, because the crystals last longer. 

Xow there are two courses open to you in this 
life. One is to seek for the pleasures and riches and 
h onors of this world, that so soon perish. It seems 
easy to get them, but you can hold them in your 
hand, or taste their sweetness, only a little while, a 
few years at the most. Then they wither, they fade, 
they decay, they perish, and leave you nothing but 
withered leaves. They are pleasant for awhile, but 
they do not last. There is no substance to them ; 
moth and rust corrupt them ; thieves break through 
and steal them. 



40 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

But if you are willing to endure hardness, you 
can gather, and store up in heaven, those treasures 
that are more beautiful than the clear crystal, more 
precious than sapphires and diamonds, and more en- 
during than gold. They are treasures that lose none 
of their beauty with passing years, and that no 
enemy can take from you, treasures that you can 
carry with you through the grave, or even send on 
before you to await your coming. Kind words, 
good deeds, a Christ-like character, Christian graces, 
redeemed souls, eternal life, — what treasures these 
are ! How beautiful they are, and at the same time 
how lasting! 

And what makes them so beautiful and so lasting ? 
Because they have in them the charity, or love, that 
gives to God and Christ and heaven their beauty, and 
that " never fadeth," just as the crystal has in it a 
substance more enduring than the flower or the berry. 

If you had one day to spend on a distant island, and 
had your choice between filling your boat with fruit, 
or with diamonds, which would yon choose ? The dia- 
monds, of course. Because the fruit would soon perish 
while the diamonds would last and have great value. 

You are spending a few clays on the island of 
Time. With what are you loading your boat for 
eternity ? Is it with earth's perishing pleasures and 
honors ? Or is it with heaven's lasting and ever- 
lasting treasures and rewards ? 



CHAPTER X. 
a jewel ix Christ's diadem. 

" They shall be mine * * * when I make up my jewels." — 
Malachi iii. : 17. 

Oue tenth lesson from the crystal is to strive to he 
one of Christfs jewels. Two crystals are slowly 
growing, side by side, down in the dark soil, or in a 
cavity in the rock. Many crystals are growing in 
just that way now. We will suppose that those two 
crystals are living things and can talk to each other. 
One of them says : "I am going to keep out of me 
all the mud, and all the specks of dirt, and every 
kind of impurity, so that I may become a clear 
crystal." 

The other one says : " Oh ! what's the use \ It 
is all dark here ; no one sees us ; we cannot see each 
other, and we cannot even see ourselves. Besides it 
is a great deal of trouble to keep the clay and coal 
and iron all out. The air is full of their particles, 
and we shall have to watch all the time. It is too 
much trouble. I am going to take things just as 
they come, the pure and the impure together, and I 
think I'll make a pretty fair crystal." 

" Well," says the first crystal, " I have heard that 
(41) 



42 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

up above these roeks there is a wonderful world, full 
of light and beauty, and I have heard that wonder- 
ful beings live there, and that they sometimes come 
and dig the crystals out of the ground, and if they 
find us clear and pure they will wear us for orna- 
ments, or put us on nice shelves in their houses and 
show us to their friends. Now I believe this, and 
I am going to try hard to keep myself clear and pure. 
If a particle of dirt comes near me, I cannot see it, 
but I can feel it, and I will drive it away. And 
though I may not grow very large, I shall try to be 
without spot and without blemish.'' 

" Oh, well ! " said the second crystal, " you are a 
great fool to be so particular. I am going to absorl > 
everything that comes along and try to be a big 
crystal, and I don't believe in any world above these 
rocks. " 

So they grew side by side, one working hard to 
keep all the mud out, and the other taking no pains 
at all. 

A hundred years passed, when one day they heard 
a noise above them. It grew louder and louder, till 
iinalh r there was a great crash, and the rock just 
above them was suddenly lifted, and a flood of light 
poured in on them. Then a man peered into the 
cavity and saw them and pulled them out and put 
them into a bag. When he reached home he washed 
them in water and looked at them very carefully. 



A JEWEL IN CHRIST'S DIADEM. 43 

The big crystal was so rough, and so full of mud 
and impurities, that he threw it out on a heap of old 
rubbish where it was soon trampled into the dirt. 
The other crystal was so clear and beautiful, so 
sparkling and bright, so free from flaws and impuri- 
ties, that he put it in a nice velvet case, and set a 
very high price on it, and afterward had it beauti- 
fully set in gold, and wore it as a costly gem. 

Children, here in the world that is dark with sin, 
you are forming your characters. They are crystal- 
lizing. All around you there are good things and 
there are bad things. There is plenty of material 
for building a pure, Christ-like character, and plenty 
too, for building an evil character. You can attract 
to yourself the good, and drive away the bad, if you 
choose to do so. Or you can let all the bad come in 
and spoil your characters if you prefer. 

You should try to keep out every impure thought 
and word and deed, for up in that world of light 
there is a being of wondrous beauty — the Saviour — 
and he is gathering jewels, "all the pure ones, ail 
the bright ones," for a diadem such as the world 
never saw. If we keep ourselves pure we shall be 
jewels in that diadem. "They shall be mine * * * 
when I make up my jewels." We shall shine in the 
light of everlasting life. 

But if we are not pure and clear, we shall be 
thrown away, cast out into outer darkness and pun- 



44 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

ished with everlasting destruction from the presence 
of God. If we would be pure we must make the 
choice to be pure, and after the choice is made there 
must be constant effort and watchfulness. 



CHAPTER XI. 

BE GENUINE. 

"And the hypocrite's hope shall perish." — Job viii. : 13. 

Still another lesson that I bring you from the 
clear crystal is this : Be true ; be sincere ; be gen- 
uine ; do not be a hypocrite. Do you know what 
hypocrisy is \ It is pretending to be what you are 
not, and pretending not to be what you are. 

This is an age of sham. Almost every good and 
valuable thing is counterfeited. Grold coin is coun- 
terfeited ; so is silver coin, and so are bank notes. 
Great care is taken by the government to prevent 
and punish counterfeiting. The most dangerous 
counterfeits of gold coins are those in which the 
outside is real gold, while the inside, the heart, is 
only lead, or some other base metal. It is veneered 
with gold, just as men imitate mahogany by putting 
a thin plate of real mahogany over some poorer 
kind of wood. 

Precious stones are imitated, and with them the 
clear crystal. Even the smoky quartz of Colorado, 
which is cut and sold under the name of topaz, is 
counterfeited. In some Denver stones you will find 

(45) 



46 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

smoky glass imitations of it. It is a counterfeit of 
a counterfeit. 

The diamond and ruby and sapphire have been 
counterfeited for centuries, and people have often 
been sadly cheated by their imitations. It is not 
safe to buy a precious stone unless you are an expert 
yourself, or else get the judgment of an expert in 
whom you have confidence. 

I have in this case imitations of fifty precious 
stones. Here are the diamond and the ruby and 
the sapphire and the topaz and the opal and the 
emerald and the hyacinth and the chrysolite and the 
turquoise and the amethyst and the chrysoprase and 
the onyx, and twenty-seven other gems. But they 
are all counterfeit. They are made out of glass, 
cut into different shapes and colored in different 
ways. 

They are very pretty to look at, but they are not 
genuine. They are hypocritical gems. If this hy- 
pocritical diamond were genuine, it would be worth 
about ten thousand dollars. As it is, it is worth 
about forty cents ; nowhere near as much as this 
clear crystal is worth. This crystal is genuine. It 
is God's work, not man's. It is simply quartz, and 
does not pretend to be a diamond, but it is genuine 
quartz, and it is almost as beautiful as the diamond. 

Character, genuine Christian character, is one of the 
good things that is counterfeited. It is composed of 



BE QEXUINE. 47 

those rare things : love, sacrifice, consecration, self- 
denial, faith, righteousness. It is something which, 
like the diamond, everybody admires. Men like to 
be admired, so they take a short cut to admiration. 
They leave out one or all of those necessary things, 
love, self-denial, faith, etc. They veneer their lives 
with outward good works, while the heart is base 
metal or common stone. 

Judas was false, and he tried to cover his false- 
hood with a kiss. John was true and genuine all 
through. Peter was a true gem, and so was King 
David, but they had flaws that had to be cut out by 
suffering and discipline. 

Men detest hypocrisy, and they generally detect 
it, too, sooner or later. Christ detects it at once, and 
oh, how he detests it ! With what terrible indigna- 
tion he says : " Woe unto you, hypocrites ! " " How 
can ye escape the damnation of hell ? " He told the 
Pharasees that they were like whited sepulchers, 
clean outside, but inside they were full of dead men's 
bones, full of all corruption. And that is the way 
in which Christ regards you if you profess to be 
Christians and are not, if you are not true, sincere, 
genuine. 

There are different ways of detecting counterfeits 
and imitations. Here are two amethysts, one genu- 
ine and the other counterfeit. I cannot tell which 
is genuine by looking at them. But if I take this 



48 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

quartz crystal and try to scratch them, or if I take 
them in my fingers and feel of them with my eyes 
shut, I can tell which is genuine and which is not. 

When you look at people in the church, or hear 
them speak, you cannot always tell whether they 
are genuine or not. But if you come in contact 
with them in daily life, or watch to see whether trials 
scratch them, then you can tell better. 

A slave in Brazil thought he had found a valuable 
diamond. He took it to the emperor who had it 
examined and concluded that it was worth one hun- 
dred and eighty-seven million dollars. It was care- 
fully laid away and closely guarded by soldiers. 
One day a European was looking at it, and he drew 
his diamond ring across it and scratched it, and thus 
proved that it was no diamond at all. The hundred 
and eighty-seven million dollars melted away at once. 

Children, is the love which you profess to have 
for Christ a sincere love \ Paul told the Corinthians 
that he asked them to give for the poor brethren at 
Jerusalem in order to test the sincerity of their love. 
"Will your love stand that test ? Are you willing to 
deny yourself and give freely to the poor and needy { 

Is your hope of heaven genuine? If it is, it is 
worth infinitely more than one hundred and eighty- 
seven million dollars. But what if, in that great day 
when God touches it, it should prove to be false \ 
"The hypocrite's hope shall perish," says God's 



BE GENUINE. 49 

word, but the true hope is "as an anchor of the 
soul, sure and steadfast, and which entereth into 
that within the veil." 



CHAPTER XII. 

QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY. 

" A little one shall become a thousand." — Isaiah lx. : 22. 
"One * - shall chase a thousand." — Joshua xxiii. : 10. 

Putting these two texts together we learn that 
one is sometimes as good as a thousand, or even bet- 
ter ; that little things may be worth more than big 
things ; and that little folks, if they have the right 
spirit in them, may accomplish more than big folks ; 
in other words our lesson is that quality is better 
than quantity. 

This clear crystal that I use for a text is less than 
an inch in length, and less than half an inch in 
thickness, but it is worth more than this large crys- 
tal which weighs one hundred and twenty times as 
much. I have seen crystals a thousand times larger 
than this that I would not exchange this one for. 
And not only that, but I could pick up a thousand 
crystals of about the size of this, and this one could 
put them all to flight. Of the thousand it could be 
said : "Plenty of them such as they are," while of 
this it could be said: "It is good, what there is 
of it." 

A big crystal is sometimes valuable because of its 
(50) 



QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY. 51 

immense size, but it is worth vastly more if it is 
perfect. I have two big garnets, the largest ever 
found in Colorado. One weighs a little more than 
the other, but it is not so valuable, because it is not 
so perfect. Immense crystals, like immense men 
and women, are mainly valuable as curiosities. 

I have a large case full of very nice large minerals. 
I have also a single drawer containing choice gems 
and crystals. The drawer with its contents is worth 
more than the large case and its contents, although all 
the crystals in the drawer would not weigh so much 
as a single one in the case. It is quality and perfec- 
tion that tell. One man said that he did not care for 
a collection of crystals that he could not carry in his 
hat. He wanted small choice things. 

Some diamonds, in being cut and polished, are 
reduced in size fully one half, but the half that is 
left is worth more than the whole before it was 
cut. Quantity has been taken away, but quality 
has been added. Luster and brilliancy and spark- 
ling beauty have been added, as rough corners, 
and black specks, and ugly flaws have been cut 
away. 

What is true of crystals is also true of some other 
things. It is true of the education we get. What 
you learn in any branch of study should be learned 
thoroughly. Your knowledge of it should be like 
the clear crystal. If you master one book, or one 



52 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

branch of knowledge, your knowledge of that book 
or subject will put to flight a thousand ignoramuses. 

It is also true of the work that we do. We would 
all like to do some great work in the world, but it 
is better to do a small work and do it well, so well 
that no fault can be found with it. "Do with thy 
might what thy hands find to do. " If you do it 
with your might you will be sure to do it well. 

Napoleon did a great work, but it was not a good 
work. Howard, who visited so many prisons, did 
a good work, although in the eyes of the world it 
was not so great. Every little duty that you have 
to do each day you can do so well that it will sparkle 
like the clear cut diamond. One thing well done is 
worth a thousand things poorly done. The thing 
that is well done puts to flight the thousand things 
that are poorly done, and takes the prize over them 
all. 

It is true also of our offerings to the Lord. The 
two mites which the widow gives out of her poverty 
out-weigh a thousand fold, and out-last a thousand 
years, the thousands of dollars which the rich cast 
in out of their abundance. 

And it is also true of our prayers. The honest, 
earnest prayer, that springs from the depth of the 
heart : " God be merciful to me a sinner," is worth 
more in God's sight than a thousand formal prayers 
that are full of hypocrisy and selfishness and world- 



Q UALITT NO T Q UANTITT. 5S 

liness. It is true of all Christian service. Better 
than a thousand bars of solid gold is a cup of cold 
water given in the name of a disciple. 

Of all these things it is true that one shall become- 
a thousand and one shall chase a thousand. 



CHAPTEK XIII. 

BEAUTY OUT OF BASEXESS. 

" Base things of the world * * * hath God chosen." — I. Cor- 
inthians i. : 28. 

Our next lesson from the crystal is that God can 
turn baseness into beauty. Out of things that are 
very common he can make things that are very pres- 
cious. Out of things that are very homely he can 
make things that are very beautiful. 

How common the sand is that we tread under our 
feet ! Yet out of such common stuff God made this 
clear crystal, and out of the same material man 
makes the myriad forms of glassware. 

The sparkling diamond that is worn by queens 
and coveted by kings, is pure carbon, just the same 
kind of stuff as the black coal that we burn in our 
stoves. Diamonds can be made out of coal. Black 
baseness is then turned into bright beauty. 

\Vhat is more common or base than clay \ Mixed 
with water and burned it makes the common brick. 
Mixed with water in the road or path it is mud, 
which we spurn and avoid. Yet the base clay has 
in it the material out of which God makes the beau- 
tiful blue sapphire, a gem that rivals the diamond. 
(54) 



CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 55 

Go into that beautiful cave at Manitou, which 
some of my Sunday-school boys and myself discov- 
ered a few years ago, and you will find the walls of 
some rooms all covered with a coral-like formation 
of velvety aragonite that is wondrously beautiful. 
The guide points to the muddy floor of the cave and 
tells }^ou that out of that dirt came the material 
that thus blossomed into beauty on the walls of that 
dark cave. 

We all love the beautiful flowers. We like to 
look at them and inhale their sweet odors. Did you 
ever think that they all came out of the dirt ? God 
made their beauty out of baseness. 

The crawling caterpillar is a base thing that we 
despise. But wait a little while. God has chosen 
it, and he will soon turn it into the beautiful butter- 
fly that we all admire. 

Do those black clouds in the west seem to you 
unlovely and threatening ? Wait until God's finger, 
the sunbeam, touches them, and then you will ex- 
claim : " O how beautiful ! " 

And all these changes from base to beautiful in 
the natural world points us to more wonderful 
changes in the spiritual kingdom. 

See that man. The world thinks him base ; they 
reject him ; they despise him ; they spit upon him ; 
they scourge him ; they crucify him. But God 
chooses him ; God exalts him ; God sets him on a 



56 BEAUTY OUT OF BASENESS. 

throne ; God gives to him a name that is above 
every name. Out of that wondrous and willing 
humiliation that Christ passed through blossoms 
the sweetest flower, crystallizes the most precious 
gem, of the universe, " chief est among ten thousand 
and altogether lovely. " 

And as God took Christ out of his base humilia- 
tion and glorified him, so he can take us out of our 
base sinfulness and glorify us. He can take our 
slipping feet out of the horrible pit of miry clay 
and put them firmly on the rock of ages. He can 
take the very clay of that pit and make it into ves- 
sels of honor. 

When coal is changed into diamonds and clay into 
sapphires, the light and color of the sun seem to 
be added to them. When we are changed from the 
1 >aseness of sin to the beauty of holiness, it is be- 
cause the light of the Sun of Righteousness shines 
into our hearts and his beauty is reflected from our 
lives. 

From the white ray of light that the sun sends 
forth come the beautiful colors of the rainbow, and 
all those colors are found in the gems that are made 
out of clay and coal and sand. From the white ray 
of God's pure love come the beautiful graces of the 
Christian life. If that love is in our hearts all those 
graces will appear in our lives, and we shall be beau- 
tiful in the sight of God and in the eyes of good men. 



CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 57 

" By the grace of God I am what I am," says the 
diamond, and so says the sapphire, and every crys- 
tal gem, and so says every flower that blooms. ' ' By 
the grace of God I am what I am," said Paul, who 
had been a base persecutor, and so says every soul 
that is redeemed from sin. And so we shall say 
through eternity. ' ' I was base ; God chose me ; by 
his orace I am what I am." 



CHAPTER XIV. 

AI3IING AT PERFECTION. 

'Be ye therefore perfect." — Matthew v. : 48. 

God commands us to be perfect, not half way per- 
fect, or almost perfect, but perfect, and we should 
all try to keep that command. 

This crystal is clear and is nearly perfect, but not 
quite. The sides are somewhat irregular ; a piece 
is broken out of one side, and there are several 
specks and flaws inside of it. 

Here is another crystal that is exceedingly im- 
perfect. It is not clear at all ; the sides are all out 
of shape ; it is rough and homely, and it contains 
all sorts of impurities, like clay and coal and iron. 

But this third crystal is as near perfect as any 
crystal can be, as near as any that I ever saw. It 
has no flaw, no unfinished side, no speck of impurity, 
and nothing that is not beautiful. It is well-shaped, 
pure, clear, complete. It is not very large, but 
what it lacks in size it makes up in perfection. It is 
a rarity. I prize it highly and everybod}' admires it. 

Now for convenience sake I will call one of these 
crystals imperfect, the next one half way perfect, 
(58) 



CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 59 

and the other one perfect. Which one should we 
try to he like ? Probably we shall fall a little below 
what we aim at. If we aim to be imperfect we 
shall probably be very imperfect and bad. If we 
aim to be about half way good we shall fall below 
that standard and be more than half way bad. 

So we must aim at perfection in everything. "We 
should aim to have perfect lessons in day-school and 
in Sunday-school. We should aim to be perfectly 
obedient to our parents, perfectly truthful, perfectly 
honest, perfectly faithful to every trust, and to be 
in all things like the perfect Jesus, in whose mouth 
was no guile, who had no sin, and who in all things 
is our perfect model. Christ says : "Be ye perfect 
even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Grod's 
perfection is revealed in Christ. So we must follow 
Christ and aim to be like him 

But it costs pain to be perfect, This crystal was 
probably made clear and beautiful and perfect in 
the midst of intense heat. When a diamond is cut 
and polished so as to make it brilliant and beautiful, 
it is put on the lapidary's lathe and for a long time 
it is ground and cut and polished, so that if it were 
a living thing and could speak it would cry out 
again and again in agony and ask : ' ' Why must I 
suffer all these things % " At last the grinding and 
cutting cease ; the faces are polished ; the finishing- 
touches are given, and then how beautiful it is I 



60 AIMING AT PERFECTION. 

How it sparkles ! How it shines ! How clazzlingly it 
reflects the light ! How valuable it is ! How eager 
kings and queens are to get it ! How it rejoices 
then in the pain and suffering against which it once 
cried out ! 

Look at Jesus ! How he shines in heaven ! How 
glorious that face of his ! Hoav brightly the light 
of God shines out of it ! Is he perfect ? Yes. And 
on his forehead I see these three words that Paul 
wrote of him : " Perfect through suffering." 

If we would be perfect we must expect to suffer. 
We must endure hardness, suffering, sorrow, afflic- 
tion, — knowing that these things will work for us a 
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 



CHAPTER XV. 

A LAW WITHIN US. 

" I will put my laws into their hearts." — Hebrews x. : 16. 

God puts His law into our hearts, is our next 
lesson from the crystal. How are crystals made ? 
That is a very hard question to answer. To answer 
it rightly we would have to enter Nature's holy of 
holies, and see the working of her laws. But we 
cannot do that ; we can only imagine it. 

The atoms, or molecules, of different kinds of 
stone have each their own shape, and there is a law 
among them by which they attract each other and 
are fastened together so as to form a crystal. That 
law, though men call it by long names, is the life 
power of the crystals. 

To better understand what a wonderful thing it is 
let us suppose, as Euskin does, that you are going 
to build a great palace. All the material for it, the 
stone and brick, the wood, glass, and iron, is scat- 
tered around on the ground in great confusion. A 
fairy appears on the scene with a magic wand, and 
at her command every stone and brick, and every 
piece of wood, glass and iron, without any confusion 
(61) 



62 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

or conflict, flies to its place, puts itself in the right 
position, and lo ! the palace is built. 

And thus it is that a crystal is built, and the 
strange, fairy-like power which brings together and 
locks together the millions of atoms and molecules 
— men call it a law. I think we would better call it 
God, or God's law, a law which he puts into the 
crystal, and by which he creates the crystal as he 
once created the world, out of chaos. 

And God is still working by this law. He is still 
making crystals. In dark caves, in little cavities 
in the rock, in moist fissures, in decaying rocks, in 
the fiery depths of the volcano, the little specks 
which no eye can see or microscope discover, are 
coming together and making a crystal, making mil- 
lions of them. And some of them, in a thousand 
years or so, may shine as bright jewels in some mon- 
arch's crown. 

And just as God puts his law into the crystal, so 
he puts his law into our hearts; but it is a very dif- 
ferent kind of law, for our hearts are very different 
things from crystals. 

First he puts into every heart the law of con- 
science. Do you know what conscience is ( It is the 
voice of God in the soul. It is God's law written 
on the heart. It says to us: " This thing is right; 
that thing is wrong. Do what is right; shun what 
is wrong." If we do what is right conscience ap- 



A LAW WITHIN US. 63 

proves us, so that we feel good in our hearts. If 
we do what is wrong it condemns us, and makes us 
feel bad in our hearts. 

When you stole something, or swore, or told a 
lie, or played truant, or did some other wicked 
thing, your conscience said to you: " You are a 
naughty, wicked child,*' and it gave you a bad feel- 
ing in the heart. But if you resisted temptation 
and did what was right, or if you confessed your 
sin, then conscience smiled on you and said: " That 
is right," and you had a good feeling in the heart 
and you began to feel happy again. 

Second, God puts into the hearts of his children 
the law of love. Everybody knows that law. 
Everybody knows that he ought to love God with 
all his heart, and his neighbor as himself. The 
heathen know it. But not everybody practices it. 
It is in everybody's mind, but not in everybody's 
heart. 

When we become sons and daughters of God by 
giving him our hearts, he puts into our hearts the 
great law of love to God and man, the law out of 
which spring all other laws; he puts it there as a 
principle, as a rule of action, a rule that governs all 
our conduct. 

It is not enough to have that law written on our 
hands and feet, our eyes and tongue. If on them 
only it does not strike back to the heart: but if it is 



64 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

on the heart it will be sure to come out on the hands 
and feet, out of the eyes and out of the mouth, to 
bless our fellow men and to honor God. 

Children, is this law in your hearts \ Have you 
let God put it there \ Are you letting him crystal- 
lize all your thoughts and feelings, all your motives 
and purposes, into the one precious gem, the one 
bright resplendent jewel, love \ 



CHAPTEK XVI. 

GLORIFY YOUR SURROUNDINGS. 

"And thou Bethlehem art not the least among the -princes of 
Juda; for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule 
my people Israel." — Matthew ii. : 6. 

I bring you another lesson from the crystal, viz : 
that we should strive to glorify and ennoble our 
surroundings. Here is a piece of sand-rock that 
holds a place of honor in my collection. On one 
side it looks very common and coarse. If it looked 
the same on the other side I should throw it away. 
But on turning it around we find an open cavity in 
which is set a wondrously clear and sparkling crys- 
tal. The coarse rock is the setting for the crystal, 
and the crystal ennobles the rock. 

I could tell you of a piece of sand-stone which has 
no value in itself, but out of it came a diamond 
which kings and queens are glad to wear, and that 
diamond glorified the humbler sand-rock that was 
its home. 

There are little cabins, small and homely, scattered 
over our land, that are held in high esteem by the 
American people. Do you ask why \ Because out 
of them came some of America's greatest rulers. 
Out of one came Garfield ; out of another came 
(65) 



68 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

Lincoln ; and out of another came Grant. The 
grand lives and heroic deeds of those men have shed 
glory over their lowly homes and humble origin. 

Why is it that the little obscure village of Bethle- 
hem, and the far-away, rocky, sun-burnt land of 
Palestine, are objects of such interest and reverence 
to all of Christendom \ Because in Bethlehem 
Christ was born, and because Palestine was the 
earthly setting in Avhich shone that resplendent gem 
from heaven. 

Here is this poor human race of ours, so sinful 
and wicked, so coarse and brutal, so loaded down 
with wretchedness and woe, filled from the sole of 
the foot to the head with wounds and bruises and 
putrefying sores. Why does not God slough it off 
and cast it away from him forever ? Because his 
image, though sadly defaced, is on it yet, and lie- 
cause Christ was made in the image of man. Hu- 
manity is the coarse rock, glorified and redeemed 
by that peerless gem. 

We are not sure that the clearest crystals and the 
finest gems have yet been taken out of the earth, 
but we are sure that in the human race will never 
be found another Christ. And yet each of us may 
be changed into his image and reflect his glory. 
Each of us may be a sparkling gem forever in his 
diadem. 

And just so far as you become like Christ, to 



GLORIFY YOUR SURROUNDINGS. 67 

that extent you will glorify your surroundings. 
You will give nobility to the common things of life. 
I have seen some very common-looking minerals 
made to appear very beautiful by the light that was 
reflected upon them from a colored ceiling. Some 
muddy pools appear beautiful when from a smooth 
surface they reflect the blue sky and the green trees. 

Do your surroundings seem very common-place, 
and does your life seem dull and stupid i And 
would you really like to know how to glorify your 
surroundings and make your life glorious with the 
light of heaven ? Do you want to be remembered 
with grateful love by your fellow men after you are 
gone ? Do you want an honored and an enduring 
name i Listen and I will tell you the only sure way 
of doing and getting these things. Enthrone Christ 
in your heart and make your life a fit setting for 
that divine jewel. Live for eternity. Let every 
little thing in your life, every common-place duty, 
and all your sports and plays, be done and engaged 
in for Christ. Whether you eat or drink, or what- 
ever you do, do all to the glory of God ; do all in 
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Carry a conse- 
crated heart into your home life and into play life. 

Be everywhere a pure, clear crystal, catching and 
reflecting the glory of Him who is the light of the 
world. Then all your surroundings will be glori- 
fied. Then with pride and with gladness men will 



68 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

say of you : "In this house he was born ; here he 
went to school ; here he played ; I was his teacher, 
I his neighbor, I his playmate. 



CHAPTER XVIL 

THE GEEAT HEALER. 

" I will heal thee of thy wounds, saiih the Lord."— Jeremiah 
xxx. : 17. 

Our seventeenth lesson from the crystal is that 
God is the great Healer of the hurts and wounds of 
our souls. 

One of the most interesting facts that I have ob- 
served in my study of crystals, especially of those 
found in the region of Pike's Peak, is this : many 
of them have been broken by some convulsion of 
nature, bat nature has done her best to mend them 
again. She heals their wounds and hurts. 

I have a precious topaz, the largest yet found in 
Colorado, one side of which was once a rough 
broken surface, but nature has healed it by covering 
it with many little crystal faces that resemble the 
large face that was once there. Some of my quartz 
crystals show the same attempt at healing. 

I found in the edge of South Park some beautiful 
crystals of black tourmaline that had been broken 
in several places, but nature had put them firmly 
together again with some of her " Rocky Mountain 
cement," or white paste, called quartz. It left a 
black crystal seamed with white veins. 
(69) 



70 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

And this healing power runs all through nature. 
When a fissure is made in the rocks by the earth- 
quake or volcano, nature heals the wound by filling 
it up with quartz, or something else, and sometimes 
she puts into the fissure — as dentists do into our 
teeth — a large amount of gold and silver. Volca- 
noes are great sores on the earth's surface, which na- 
ture, as soon as she gets a chance, covers with grass 
and flowers and trees. 

When I was a boy my father had a sugar-bush. 
Every spring we would bore holes into those maple 
trees to let the sap run out. The healing power 
present in the trees would go to work at once and 
in the course of time those wounds would be healed, 
covered over with a new growth of wood. 

A friend of mine, when a boy, cut the initials 
of the girl he loved into the smooth bark of a 
beech tree. Years after he went back to that 
tree and found that, though the marks were there, 
nature had healed the wounds he made in that 
tree, and she had also fully healed the wounded 
feelings that he had when that girl married some 
one else. 

If you cut your flesh or break a bone, there is a 
healing power in your body that goes to work at 
once to heal the hurt. But it is a fact, which physi- 
cians in hospitals are all the time noticing, that if 
the body is saturated with tobacco, or beer, or wins- 



THE GREAT HEALER. 71 

key, or weakened by excess of any kind, there is 
very little, if any healing power present. 

There is then, everywhere present in nature, an 
invisible healing power that seeks to make us whole, 
and is not that power God, God the great Healer I 
And in the spiritual kingdom there is, too, every- 
where present a healing power that seeks to make 
us holy, and that power — is it not God in Christ, 
Christ the great Physician I 

Think you that God would provide for healing 
the wounds of the crystal, and the rock, and the 
tree, and the body, and make no provision for heal- 
ing the wounds that sin makes in these souls of 
ours, that are made in his image ? Will he repair 
the track and not touch the broken engine ? "Will 
he mend the watch-case and not the works inside \ 

When we feel the hurt of sin ; when we see how 
it cuts and wounds the soul, we cry out with Jere- 
miah the prophet : "Is there no balm in Gilead ; 
is there no physician there 3 " Yes, thank God ! 
there is balm in Gilead ; there is a physician for the 
soul. 

" The great Physician now is near, 
The sympathizing Jesus, 
He speaks the drooping heart to cheer, 
Oh, hear the voice of Jesus." 

But if you would have your souls healed you 
must follow Christ's directions, and use those helps 



72 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

and remedies that he prescribes, just as you must 
follow the doctor's directions when your body is 
sick or hurt. There are different helps that Christ 
recommends, but three of the most important arc 
these : Prayer, Bible study, and doing good. 
Prayer is one, f or 

''It gives the burdened spirit ease. 

And soothes the troubled breast: 
Yields comfort to the mourning soul, 
And to the weary rest." 

And the Bible is another help, 

"It sweetly cheers our drooping hearts, 
In this dark vale of tears: 
Life, light, and joy it still imparts, 
And quells our rising fears." 

And doing good, or Christian work, is another and 
very important remedy that the great Healer wants 
us to use, 

" Numb and weary on the mountains, 

Would 'st thou sleep amid'st the snow V 
Chafe that frozen form beside thee, 

And together both shall glow. 
Art thou stricken in life's battle ? 

Many wounded 'round thee moan : 
Lavish on their wounds thy balsams, 

And that balm shall heal thine own." 






CHAPTER XVIII. 



CRYSTAL INCLUSIONS. 



" The Lord searcheth all hearts, and under standeth all the im- 
aginations of the thoughts." — I Chronicles, xxviii. : 9. 

The eighteenth lesson that I bring you from the 
crystal is that we ought not to have anything in our 
minds, any thought, or feeling, or purpose, that we 
do not want God to see. 

One of the curious tilings about many crystals is 
that they have something inside of them different 
from the crystal itself. Mineralogists call anything 
found inside of a crystal an inclusion, because it is 
included, or inclosed in the crystal. 

A lapidary is a man who cuts and polishes pre- 
cious stones. Suppose I go to one of the lapidaries 
in this city and take one of my precious topazes and 
ask him if he can cut a good gem out of it. He ex- 
amines it carefully ; he holds it up to the light ; he 
looks at it with his microscope, and then he says : 
u Xo, there is a flaw in it, or there is a number of 
little flaws ; it will not make a good gem." Then 
I show him a quartz crystal and ask him if that will 
make a good gem. He looks into it and through it 
and says : " No, for right in the center is a piece 
of black coal. 

(73) 



74 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

Sometimes however, the inclusion, instead of be- 
ing a flaw or piece of coal, is itself a beautiful crystal 
or gem, and then the crystal that contains it is worth 
all the more. Here is a clear quartz crystal from 
Japan, through which run many delicate, thread-like 
crystals of hornblende. Here is a similar crystal 
from Colorado. Here is a piece of quartz full of 
many-colored, brilliant, needle-like crystals of rutile. 
Here is a quartz crystal from Arkansas which has 
inside of it some beautiful white crystals of feldspar. 
And here is a sapphire from far-away Ceylon ; it is 
opaque, but of a milky white color. The inside is 
so full of tiny six-sided crystals that when the light 
strikes on its surface you see a beautiful star of six 
rays, like a snow crystal. And here too, is a crystal 
of quartz from Colorado, so poor and rough that at 
first sight we would throw it away. But look 
closely and you will see, partly buried in one side 
of it, a very beautiful crystal of a very rare gem, 
phenaeite. 

I doubt if you can find a crystal anywhere that 
has not something in it, something good or bad, 
something that either adds to its value, or else sub-. 
tracts from it. 

In this respect your souls are like the crystal. 
Covered up in them are thoughts and feelings and 
purposes, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, valuable 
or worthless. I may not be able to see them ; per- 



CRYSTAL INCLUSIONS. 75 

haps you may not see them clearly yourselves. But 
God sees them. " The Lord searcheth all hearts, 
and understandeth all the imaginations of the 
thoughts." 

God is the great lapidary of souls. He knows 
how to cut and polish them and make them gems in 
his crown. We should take our souls to him and 
say: "Lord, search me, try me, test me, and see 
if there be any evil way, any flaw, in me. " And he 
will do it. He does it whether we ask him or not. 
He holds us up in the clear, piercing light of his 
truth, of his law ; he looks us through and through. 
Our secret sins, as the psalmist says, are in the 
light of his countenance. 

And what does he see in our souls i Gems, or 
flaws i Does he see thoughts that are radiant with 
truth, feelings that glow with love, and a purpose 
to do right which is as unyielding as the diamond X 
Or does he see thoughts that are false, feelings that 
are wicked, imaginations that are vain, and a pur- 
pose to please ourselves rather than God \ 

In one child's heart he sees such thoughts as these: 
hatred, envy, wrath, strife, uncleanness, disobedi- 
ence, deceit, falsehood. They are like pieces of 
black coal in the crystal. In anotner child's heart 
he sees love, joy, peace, gentleness, obedience, 
goodness, meekness, faith, — and these are like 
of ems within a gem. 



76 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

A huge iron beam is being cast for an iron bridge. 
Through somebody's carelessness a large bubble of 
air gets into the melted iron, and when the iron 
cools there is a flaw there. Xo human eye can see 
it and the beam goes into the bridge. By and by 
it happens that the whole weight of an engine comes 
right on the spot where the flaw is. The iron beam 
breaks, and with an awful crash engine, train, and 
bridge, go down together and many people are 
killed. 

With beams of strength your souls should be 
built. But some of you are overlooking the flaws. 
You are letting in some falsehood, or false principle, 
something that does not stand the test of God's 
word, some bubble of air where there should be 
solid iron. It seems trifling to you now, but by 
and by the whole weight of temptation, the whole 
stress of the powers of darkness, will be brought to 
bear right on that weak place, and your character, 
your soul, will go down with a crash. Be very 
careful then not to let your soul include or cover 
anything that will not stand the test of God's 
searching eye. 



i 



CHAPTER XIX. 

CHRIST ON OUR FOREHEADS. 
41 Ilis name shall be on their foreheads." — Revelation xxii. : 4. 

The crystals of any mineral may be found in a 
good many different places, but there will be differ- 
ences in them, so that a person who is familiar with 
crystals can go into a collection and tell where this 
and that and the other crystal came from, without 
any help from the labels. 

If I should go into the British museum and see a 
crystal of tourmaline from Pierrepont, New York, 
or a quartz crystal from Herkimer County, New 
York, I should know at once where it came from, 
and be quite sure of it, even if it were labeled as com- 
ing from China. I have dug and handled and 
cleaned so many hundred crystals from those places 
that I know them at once from certain peculiarities 
or marks, which are plainly stamped on their faces, 
but which it is difficult to describe. On one crystal 
I think I see Pierrepont plainly marked, and on an- 
other, Herkimer County, and on another Salida, 
and on another Pike's Peak. 

You know the cattle and horses that run loose on 
the plains are branded with the name or initials of 
(77) 



78 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

their owner, or with some mark, to show whose 
they are. The name or mark is burnt into the body. 
80 nature brands her crystals to tell where they 
come from. 

Once I went back to my native place and one af- 
ternoon I went into the day school and looked 
around upon the children gathered there. Some- 
how their faces seemed very familiar, and I could 
tell whose children some of them were because they 
looked so much like their parents. On their fore- 
heads and faces seemed to be written the names of 
the boys and girls that I had studied and played 
with nearly twenty years before. 

Xow Christ says that his servants shall serve 
him, and shall see his face, and his name shall be on 
their foreheads. And in another place he says that 
upon those who overcome he will write the name of 
his God, and his new name, and the name of the 
city of God, the New Jerusalem, the city to which 
such persons belong and towards which they are 
traveling. If these marks are upon our foreheads, 
in plain sight, then surely people ought to know 
whom we belong to and where we are going. 

AATien Cain went out from the presence of the 
Lord a mark was set upon him, perhaps upon his 
forehead, so that every one who saw it knew that he 
was a murderer. 

In one of his visions Ezekiel saw six men with 



CUR IS T ON UR F OR ERE A DS. 79 

sharp swords, and one of them had a horn full of 
ink, and God told him to go through Jerusalem and 
put a mark on the foreheads of those avIio were 
sighing and crying because of the sins that were 
committed in the land. Then the others were told 
to go and slay utterly all those who did not have 
the mark on their foreheads. If something like 
that should be done now would we be among those 
who had a mark on their foreheads because they 
hated sin and sorrowed over the sins committed in 
the land \ 

If I could follow you a whole week and watch 
you closely and hear all you said I think I could tell 
whether Christ's mark was upon you or not. But 
if I cannot thus watch you somebody else can and 
does. 

Once when I was traveling a stranger got on the car 
at a small station, and almost immediately something 
happened about a seat that would have made some 
men get mad and swear. But he took it so quietly, 
and was so reasonable about it, that I said to myself: 
" I think that man must be a Christian." And sure 
enough when I became acquainted with hini I found 
that he was a Christian, and that he was on his way 
to attend the same meeting to which I was going. 

We may sometimes be mistaken, but when Christ's 
mark is plainly set on a person's face, or manner of 
life, we can generally tell it. I think I can see that 






80 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

mark on some of your faces to-day, and I know that 
you are servants of the great King, and that you arc 
journeying to the heavenly city. But on some of 
your faces the mark is faint and dim, it is hard to 
tell whether it is there or not. 

Said one little boy to another: i; I hoar that 
your brother Charlie has become a Christian. Is 
that so?" "I don't know," said the other, "they 
say he has, but 1 am going to try him and see." 
And so he teased his brother, and broke his play- 
things, and tormented his dog, and did other mean 
things, to see if he could get his brother mad. But 
Charlie did not get mad, or strike back, or swear, 
as lie had once done. And his brother was con- 
vinced and said to his friend: "Charlie is a Chris- 
tian; I know it, for I have tried him." 

Charlie was looking at the King, and serving him, 
and he had the King's mark on his forehead. Are 
you one of the King's servant's \ Have you scon 
the King in his beauty \ And do all your friends 
see the Kinsr** name on your forehead \ 



CHAPTER XX. 

TRIED WITH FIRE. 

*' That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than 
of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be 
found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of 
Jesus Christ." — I Peter i. : 7. 

If you do not remember all of this text please to 
remember the three words : ' ' tried with fife. " It 
is very interesting to study the effects of heat upon 
crystals, and see in what different ways they are 
affected by it. This is generally done with a blow- 
pipe, an instrument which produces an intense heat 
by blowing to a point the flame of a candle or spirit- 
lamp. 

Some crystals when tried with tire lose their beau- 
tiful colors. The green Amazon stone and the 
smoky quartz, so common in Colorado, both lose 
their color by being left for a while in a hot tire. 
So does amethyst. A few years ago some beauti- 
ful hyacin thine crystals were found near Pike's 
Peak. Nobody seemed to know what they were ; 
some called them one thing and some another. In. 
trying to find out what they were, I took some one 
day and put them under the plow-pipe. As the 
(81) 



82 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL, 

heat became intense they lost their beautiful color, 
and when they became cool the color did not come 
back again. Then I knew by that fire test, that 
they were zircons. 

Some crystals, like the beautiful wine colored 
topazes and red rhodocrosites from the Arkansas 
valley, lose their color gradually by being exposed 
to the heat of the sun. I found some that had 
grown quite pale by long exposure. 

Some crystals change their color when tried with 
lire. The red spinel, or spinel ruby, changes to a 
brown or black color, and on cooling it becomes 
green, then nearly colorless, and at last becomes red 
again, as though it was ashamed of losing its color 
and took it back by degrees. 

Other crystals, like sapphire, do not lose their 
color at all, and some crystals become brighter when 
tried with fire. The yellowish diamond takes on a 
beautiful rose color and retains it two or three days. 
Certain ores containing gold appear dull and homely 
until they are roasted in the lire, and then the pure 
gold appears. 

Fire then, is one of the ways in which crystals 
are tested, and it is one of the ways, as the text 
says, in which the Christian's faith, is tried. Our 
faith if genuine, is more precious than gold that per 
isheth, and it is necessary to try it with lire so as 
to prove whether it is genuine. 



TRIED WITH FIRE. m 

In the early centuries of Christianity the Church 
was tried and purified by fierce fires of persecution. 
Great numbers of professing Christians were brought 
to the stake to be burned to death and the fire had 
upon them just such effects as it has on crystals. 
Some of them lost their faith. The sight of fire 
drove it out of them, or showed that it was not 
true faith. Some times they lost their faith but re- 
gained it again. When Mary came to the throne 
of England, Cramner, an English reformer, was 
thrown into prison. In order to save his life he 
signed a paper in which he gave up part of 
his faith. But in spite of that he was burned 
at the stake. When the fire kindled around him 
he thrust his right hand into the fire that it might 
burn first, because with that hand he had denied 
Christ. 

In tens of thousands of cases the Christian's faith 
was proved genuine by the fire. It stood the test. 
In some cases it shone all the brighter under the 
intense heat. When Rogers was burnt he died 
bathing his hands in the flame as if it had been cold 
water. Some have died in the flame singing joy- 
fully and triumphantly. As one boy was being- 
burnt he said to the by-standers : " Pray for me. 1 ' 
"I will no more pray for thee," said one of them, 
u than I will pray for a dog." " Then," said the 
boy, " Son of God, shine upon me." And just then 



84 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

the sun shone out of a dark cloud full in his face, 
and the Son of God shone into his heart. 

Christians are still tried with fire in some parts of 
the world. Some were burnt to death only last 
year in Africa. But in our land such persecution 
has passed away, and our faith is tried in other 
ways, by other kinds of fire. It is tested by trials 
of various kinds, by disappointments, and los.ses, 
and temptations. 

Did you ever hear of the Shut-in-Society? It is 
composed of invalids who are shut up in the house, 
who correspond with each other and publish a little 
paper. Some of them collect minerals and shells 
and other curiosities to while away the time. It 
was my privilege recently to send collections of 
Colorado crystals to two of them, women who can- 
not walk. One of them has been an invalid for nine 
years, and the other forty-seven years, ever since 
she was thirteen years old, and unable to walk all 
that time except once for a little while on crutches. 
Her faith has been tried by affliction, and I think 
it must shine brightly, for in her letter of thanks 
she says : "I am not discouraged ; I feel the ever- 
lasting arms underneath, and I have learned that 
there is service for the feeblest, who only sit and 
wait." 

" I know not what trials await you, young friends, 
but when they come I pray that the faith which you 



TRIED WITH FIRE. 85 

profess to have in Christ, more precious than gold, 
may stand the test, and be found unto praise and 
honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

CRYSTALS AND ELECTRICITY. 

•' They were all filled with the Holy Ghost.." — Acts ii. : 4. 

There is another curious thing about crystals, of 
which I have not spoken yet, the power that they 
have of becoming electric. You have all heard of 
electricity, and of what wonderful things it does, 
I nit none of us really know what electricity is. 

About five hundred years before Christ, Thales 
discovered that pieces of the mineral called amber, 
when rubbed hard against a dry substance, would 
attract certain little things to themselves. Electron 
was the name for amber, so they called that prop- 
erty electricity. For over two thousand years the 
world's knowledge of electricity stopped with the 
use of amber as a curious little plaything. 

Finally it was discovered that other things had 
this property, and last century Franklin discovered 
that it was the same thing as lightning, and then 
only a few years ago — it was the year I was born 
— they began to send messages by it, and you all 
know what wonderful things are done with it now. 

All crystals become electric by friction, but some 
become electric much easier than others, and some 
(86) 



CRYSTALS AND ELECTRICITY. 87 

hold the electricity longer than others. If I rub 
this crystal of tourmaline on my coat until it be- 
comes warm, one end will attract little pieces of 
paper and the other end will repel them. If I hold 
this precious topaz to the tire until it gets quite 
warm it will do the same thing, and the topaz will 
hold the electricity for hours. Some crystals retain 
this power for days. Some become electric by 
simbly pressing them between the fingers. 

Clear crystals become electric more easily than 
those that are not clear. The garnet will not be- 
come electric until its sides have been polished, and 
as a rule polished stones become electric more easily 
than rough stones. The diamond, however, is an 
exception to this rule. Crystals become electric by 
heat. The heat is produced by rubbing the crystal 
against something or by holding it to the fire, or in 
some other .way. 

Electricity is a very wonderful and mysterious 
thing, and I do not know what to call it unless it be 
the power of Gocl in those things. 

Is there anything resembling it for our souls? 
Yes, and it is what the Bible calls the Holy Ghost, 
or the Holy Spirit. It is the breath of Almighty 
God, and when Christ breathes it upon us, as he 
did upon the disciples, then we are to receive it. 
The bible tells us to be filled with this heavenly 
electricity, and if we are filled with it, as we are 



88 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

told that the disciples were on the Day of Pentecost, 
then we shall have a drawing power, as the disci- 
ples did when the people run to them from all parts . 
of the city, and three thousand were drawn to 
( Jhrist. 

And it will give us a repelling power too, so that 
we shall drive away from us evil thoughts and feel- 
ings and habits, and every kind of sin, just as one 
end of this crystal of tourmaline drives away from 
it the little particles of dust and dirt. 

The other day I stood by a small man as he shook 
hands with a large strong man, who was full of 
vitality. fc 'Why," said the small man, "how full 
of electricity you are ! As I took your hand I 
felt the electricity come into my hand. " We ought 
to be so full of the Holy Spirit, as Christ was, that 
when we meet our fellow-men we shall by our looks, 
our words, our tones, our acts, impart to them a 
spark of the heavenly electricity. 

How can we do this '( First, by being clear. Our 
minds must be clear as crystal. We must have and 
know the truth. If our thoughts are impure and 
our minds full of falsehood and error, we cannot he 
filled with the Spirit. Secondly, we must have that 
polish of soul which comes by discipline. If this 
garnet had been a living thing it would have suf- 
fered much when it was ground and polished on 
the hard stone. Hut in that way it gained the 



CRYSTALS AND ELECTRICITY. 89 

power of becoming electric. This other garnet of 
the same size that was never polished has no such 
power. So it hurts us when God chastens and disci- 
plines us, but it gives us the power of drawing men 
by sympathy. Thus Christ suffered that he might 
sympathize with us and draw us to Mm. 

And thirdly, we must, like the crystal, be warm, 
warm with love, for it is love that warms the soul, 
a love for Christ that never cools off, and a love for 
souls that many waters cannot quench. 

If you fulfill these conditions God will fill you 
with his Spirit. Your soul will repel evil things 
and attract good things, and through you Christ 
will draw men unto himself. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

ALL IS NOT GOLD THAT GLITTERS. 
" Judge not according to the appearance." — John vii. : 24. 

Iron pyrites is a very common mineral. It is 
found in a great many places and in a great many 
mines. It has a very bright, shining appearance, 
and people who are not familiar with it are very apt 
to take it for gold. It has often been the case that 
ignorant men, finding it on their farms, have thought 
that it was gold, and a great deal of money has been 
wasted in digging for it. It is often called " fool's 
gold," so many have been fooled by it. They 
judged according to appearance and were deceived. 

When this country was first settled ship loads of 
sand full of particles of shining mica were sent back 
to England on the supposition that it was gold. 
Great was the disappointment of the owners when 
it was proved to be worthless. 

I could show you some specimens of almost pure 
silver that look black and dingy. You would 
probably throw them away as not worth keeping. 
Yet if put through the smelter they would produce 
the pure shining silver. 

I could also show you some specimens that do 
(90> 



ALL IS NOT GOLD THAT GLITTERS. 91 

not glitter at all. They are very common dark 
looking stones, and yet they are very rich in gold, 
and when they are heated very hot the bright gold 
appears. Heat makes pure gold shine more brightly, 
but if you put fool's gold into the fire it turns black. 

All is not gold that glitters, and all are not dia- 
monds that sparkle. Common quartz crystals are 
sometimes very brilliant, while diamonds when first 
found sometimes appear very rough and common 
looking. There are many persons who, judging by 
appearance only, would trade off a rough diamond 
worth a hundred thousand dollars, for a pretty 
quartz crystal, or piece of cut glass, worth twenty- 
five cents. 

If the person who finds some shining stuff or 
sparkling stones in the ground, would go to the 
trouble of getting an expert to examine them, or 
would study into the matter himself, he would find 
that he could not trust to appearances. 

And all this is just as true among men as it is 
among crystals. If you children and young people 
will only remember all through lif e what these older 
people all know by experience to be true, that " all 
is not gold that glitters," and act accordingly, it 
will save you from many troubles and losses. 

The best people do not always appear the most 
brilliant. Some of the truest hearts in the world 
are diamonds in the rough, and some of the worst 



92 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

people in the world have a good deal of outside glit- 
ter and show. When I was young I knew a boy 
who dressed very nicely and appeared very smart ; 
the girls thought he was splendid and the other 
boys envied him. He glittered, but he was not 
gold. The last I heard of him was that he was a 
drunkard. 

Abraham Lincoln was homely in appearance and 
awkward in manner. There was not much polish to 
him ; he did not glitter, but he had a true heart ; 
he was a diamond in the" rough, and ship-loads of 
pure gold could not pay for his services to our 
country. 

City life and city occupations glitter more in 
youthful eyes than country life and country occupa- 
tions, but I think the people who live and work in 
the country get more of the sweet content, the 
golden happiness of life than city people do. 

There lived once a man whose heart was made of 
heaven's purest gold, and it was he who spoke the 
words of our text. He did not glitter in the sight 
of the world. No golden lace or sparkling gems 
shone from his manger cradle. Men looked at him 
and they said : "It is only a root out of a dry 
ground. There is no beauty in him, we do not de- 
sire him." 

But some of them looked again, and grew silent. 
They saw a divine light in his eye. They listened 



ALL IS NOT GOLD THAT GLITTERS. 93 

as he spoke golden words, and they watched him as 
he did golden deeds. They changed their mind, 
and they said : " He is heaven's finest gold ; he is 
heaven's matchless gem ; he is chiefest among ten 
thousand ; he is altogether lovely." They sought 
to be transformed into his image, and finally with 
unutterable joy they said: "Christ is mine and I 
am his." 



CHAPTER XXHL 

CRYSTALS THAT SHINE IN THE DARK. 

" 1 am exceeding joyful in all our tribulations." — II Corinthi- 
ans vii. : 4. 

I have told you about crystals that are very clear, 
crystals that reflect the light, and about the different 
colors that crystals have. These things do not sur- 
prise us much, because they are so common. For 
crystals to let the light shine through them, or to 
reflect the light and to show color in the light, seems 
the proper thing for crystals to do. 

But there are some crystals that have the peculiar 
property of shining in the dark. This property, 
which some other things besides crystals have, is 
called phosphorescence, from a substance called 
phosphorus, which means a light-bearer. 

If you put little pieces of fluorite (fluor spar) in 
a dark room on a hot shovel that is not red hot, 
they will phosphoresce, or throw off beautiful colors. 
If you rub pieces of loaf sugar together in the dark 
they will give off light. If you take a diamond and 
expose it to the rays of the sun for a while and then 
take it into the dark it will shine, as though it had 
caught the sun's rays within itself and were giving 
(94) 



CR YS TA LS TEA T SHINE IN THE D ARK. 95 

tkeni oiF in the dark. There are some diamonds 
however that will not do this. 

You know they have a kind of paint now which 
they use to put on match boxes, so that you can see 
them in the dark, and on clock and watch dials, so 
that you can tell the time in the night. It has been 
proposed to paint the inside of cars with it, so that 
they will shine in the night, and when they go 
through dark tunnels. 

The apostle Paul passed through a good many 
dark places ; he had some veiy dark and trying ex- 
periences. But in them all he was exceeding joyful; 
he " overflowed with joy," as the new version ex- 
presses it. He gloried in tribulation, so much so 
that once when he was thrown into a miserable dun- 
geon he spent a part of the night in singing praises 
to Grod, his soul was so full of joy. 

Xow how could he do this ? How could he shine 
so in dark places ? Evidently he had something in 
his soul that made him shine ; he had some kind of 
spiritual phosphorescence. Whatever it was we 
want it, for we all have dark places to pass through; 
ayc all have tribulations and trials, and how much 
happier we shall be, and how much happier we shall 
make others, if in every dark place we can shine, 
and thus show that we overflow with joy and light ! 

Christ is the Light of the world, and the joy of 
every troubled heart. He is the lio-ht that shineth 



96 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

in dark places, and Paul had that light in his heart. 
Christ dwelt in him so completely that wherever 
Paul was he shone with the light of God. No mat- 
ter how gloomy the day or how dark the night, if 
you looked at Paul you saw a shining light. 

When Stephen, the first martyr, was brought be- 
fore the council at Jerusalem and false charges were 
made against him, and he was about to be stoned 
to death, do you suppose that his cheek blanched 
with terror, or that his face showed signs of fear ? 
No, indeed. In that dark hour those Avho looked at 
him stedfastly saw his face shine like the face of an 
angel. And even in this day we can see that same 
divine glow, that spiritual phosphorescence, in the 
faces of God's children. 

"Take the bright shell from its home on the lea, 
And wherever it goes it will sing of the sea." 

Take the diamond from under the shining sun 
and put it in a dark room and it will still shine with 
the light of the sun. 

So take the Christian into the dark, into the very 
midst of trials and afflictions, and if he be a true 
child of God he will shine, not with his own light, 
but with the light he has absorbed from the Sun of 
Kighteousness, from Christ who is the Light of this 
adrk world. 

Take the diamond rare to the open air ; 
Let tbe glittering bod. with his race half run 



CRYSTALS THAT SHINE IN THE DARK. 97 

Shed brightest rays upon it : 
Then take it back to darkness black, 
And see it shine with radiance fine, 

By light that's stored within it. 

Let the Christian true, though his friends be few, 
Long abide in the light that shines so bright 

From out the Savior's eves; 
Then pass the rod o'er the child of God, 
And see how bright shines forth the light 

That from his soul doth rise. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

DECAYED CRYSTALS. 

"Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.' T 
— James v. : 2. 

There is a place in Maine where a great many 
beautiful crystals of precious tourmaline have been 
found. The crystals are clear, of different colors, — 
the same crystal sometimes containing different 
colors, — and are remarkably beautiful and of great 
value. 

Sometimes when the men were digging for those 
crystals they would open a cavity in the rock, and in 
the loose sand at the bottom of the cavity they 
would see the perfect outline of a beautiful crystal 
gem. But as soon as they touched it, or tried to lift 
it, it would crumble all to pieces. It was a rotten 
crystal. It had been spoiled, probably by the water 
that had trickled into the cavity and frozen. 

I have sometimes found what I thought was a 
beautiful crystal, but when I tried to get it out of 
the rock it would crumble all to pieces.. We do not 
think much of rotten crystals, crystals that the air, 
or water, or something else, has corrupted and eaten 
until they are simply good for nothing. 
(98) 



DECAYED CRYSTALS. 99 

You have heard that the obelisk that was brought 
from Egypt to New York City and set up in Central 
Park cannot stand our severe climate. The moist 
air, the cold and the heat, made the surface scale oiF 
until there was danger that it would be spoiled, so 
they covered the surface with some kind of varnish 
to protect it. . 

Sometimes a noble tree that seems all right on the 
outside has a rotten heart. The worms eat through 
it and in some high wind it blows over, and then we 
can see that it was rotten in the center. 

Sometimes a ship has gone to sea apparently in 
good condition, but little worms were eating the hard 
oak planks, until they became rotten and gave way r 
and the water came in and sunk the ship. 

Sometimes a garment is put away in the spring 
where the moths can get at it, and when it is taken 
out in the fall it all drops to pieces. It is moth- 
eaten and spoiled. 

So it is with many other things. Great cities and 
states, like Sodom, and Babylon, and Rome, have be- 
come so corrupt, so rotten with wickedness, that they 
fell to pieces and were destroyed. Men sometimes 
appear very fair on the outside ; their fellow- 
men trust them ; but wickedness is eating into the 
heart, and by and by they fall, and then everybody 
sees — what God saw all the time — that their hearts 
are moth-eaten. Their character gradually crum- 



100 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

bled, and then their reputation suddenly tumbled. 
A great many people are laying up riches, and 
they make their money, or get it rather, by oppres- 
sing the poor and cheating the widow and the father- 
less and the needy. They think that they are laying 
by something that will make them happy in the fu- 
ture. But by and by they go and look at their 
riches to see if they cannot get some happiness out 
of them, and behold their wealth is corrupt and rot- 
ten and eaten of worms ; their gold and silver is 
cankered ; and their rust is a witness against them 
and will eat their flesh like fire, and fear lays hold 
upon them as they hear from the Lord of Sabaoth 
the echo of the cries of the poor and needy whom 
they have robbed. To such men the apostle says : 
" Go to, now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your 
miseries that shall come upon you. For your riches 
are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. " 

In the Arabian Nights there is a story of a man 
who received each day, from a stranger who traded 
with him, a fresh new coin of gold, which he packed 
away in a trunk until the trunk was full. Finally 
when he went to the trunk to count his riches and 
try to get some happiness out of them he found only 
a trunk full of dry leaves. A wicked magician had 
deceived him, making the leaves appear like gold 
coins. 

Let us not be thus deceived, as so many are, by 



DECAYED CRYSTALS.. 101 

that wicked one who tries to make withered leaves 
appear like pure gold. If we choose we can make 
friends of the mammon of unrighteousness and 
change earthly treasures into heavenly treasures. 
But if we seek to lay up treasures on earth, especi- 
ally if we do it by wronging others, we shall find 
in the end that our riches are corrupt and rotten, 
and we shall be left to weep and howl in our poverty 
and misery. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

CRYSTALS OF SALT. 

-"Salt is good; but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall 

it be seasoned." — Luke xiv : 34, 35. 
41 Ye are the salt of the earth." — Matthew v : 13. 

I have here a very clear crystal of native salt just 
as it was taken out of the ground in southern Utah. 
It looks exactly like some other crystals, but as soon 
as I touch my tongue to it I know by the taste that 
it is salt. I have also some clusters of salt crystals 
that I obtained in Salt Lake City. As the waves of 
Great Salt Lake dash on the shore the spray falls on 
weeds and twigs, and thus these crystals gradually 
grow. The water of that lake is so full of salt that 
when I went in bathing I could float on my back 
without any effort. 

The ocean is full of salt. If it were all gathered 
out of the ocean it would form vast mountains. In 
some parts of the world there are mountains of salt 
which were formed out of the salt that was once dis- 
solved in the ocean. Some of the deepest mines in 
the world are salt mines. 

An}' of you can make crystals of salt by dissolving 
as much salt in water as it will hold and then allow- 
ing the water to slowly evaporate. 
(102) 



CB 7STALS OF SAL T. 103 

Salt is good, the Bible says, and it is good because 
it is a preservative ; it keeps things from spoiling by 
decay. But if the salt loses its saltness, its savor, 
then you cannot preserve anything with it, and there 
is nothing with which it can be preserved, or sea- 
soned. It is then good for nothing, only to be 
thrown out with other rubbish and trodden under 
foot. It is not good for the land ; it is not even good 
for the rubbish heap. It is good for nothing at all. 
Throw it away, and throw it as far as you can. 

Christ says that his followers are the salt of this 
earth. It is Christianity, or Christ, in the hearts and 
lives of Christians, that preserves this wicked world 
from destruction. If ten righteous men had been 
found in Sodom they would have been the salt, the 
salvation, of that city. It would have been pre- 
served for their sakes. 

So it takes a certain number, a certain proportion, 
of true Christians in this world to keep it from being 
destroyed. We know not just how many are needed, 
but suppose there was enough lacking one. Would 
you be that one ? Would you be willing to become 
a Christian in order to save the world from destruc- 
tion ? If you cannot save the whole world by becom- 
ing a Christian you can save a part of it. You can 
keep a certain part of it sweet and pure. You can 
at all events preserve and save that part of it which 
you represent, by having in your soul the true salt. 



104 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

But when, as is often the case, persons call them- 
selves Christians and have not Christ in the heart and 
life, when they have only a name to live and are 
dead, then they have lost their savor, and they can 
no longer help save the world ; they cannot even 
save themselves. Such professors are good for 
nothing ; they are a hindrance rather than a help r 
and if they do not repent and recover their saltness 
the only thing God can do with them is to cast them 
out from his presence forever. 

Some of you are called Christians. You are 
known as such. O be very careful not to lose your 
savor, the savor of a Christ-like spirit and a Christ- 
like life, the aroma of godliness ! If you keep Christ, 
the Savior, in your heart always, you will be a part 
of the salt of the earth, and with that savor you will 
be a savior to others. 



PART II. 



CHAPTEK XXVI. 

A CRYSTAL YEAR. — A SERMON FOR NEW YEARS DAY. 

" I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be pre- 
served blameless." — I Thessalonians v.: 23. 

It is with these words, my young friends, that I 
greet you on the first Sunday of the new year, the 
year of our Lord 1887. And these words are my 
happy New Year to you, and they are a part of my 
own motto text for the New Year. I certainly 
could wish you no greater happiness than that your 
whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved 
blameless through another year, and through all the 
years until Christ comes for you. 

I have been looking over my crystals to see if 
they would furnish us a New Year's lesson, and they 
have very kindly done it. You know we are on 
good terms with the crystals now, and they are very 
accommodating to those who appreciate them. 

I have one crystal that is cloudy and opaque from 
one end to the other. There is not a clear spot in it. 
It is hardly worth keeping. I think I will throw it 
away. It slipped into my collection with some 



106 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

good specimens, and if any of you want it you can 
have it. 

Then I have another that is clear at the beginning. 
It promises well at the outset, but after awhile it 
grows cloudy and the last part of the crystal isn't 
clear at all. 

And I have another that is imperfect and opaque 
at the beginning and continues so almost to the end, 
but just as the crystal was being finished it dropped 
its bad ways, and the point, the tip end, is pure and 
clear. There is quite a tendency among crystals to 
reform just at the last end. 

And I have still another crystal, and a nurnbor of 
them, that are well-shaped and clear and pure at the 
beginning and through their whole length and at 
their ends. Such an one is this crystal which I 
have used for a text so many times. 

Now if I should ask you to come and take your 
choice from these four crystals, which one would 
you choose? Would you take the one that is 
opaque all through? or the one that is opaque 
towards the end ( or the one that is clear at the 
tip end ? or the one that is clear from one end to 
the other ? I am sure you would each take the last. 

But if I should ask you to choose the one that you 
honestly thought was a picture of the past year of 
your life, I fear that not many of you, if any, would 
pick up the clearest one. I wonder if any of you 
would take the poorest. 



A CRT ST A L TEAR. 107 

Then again if I should ask you to come and pick 
out the one that you thought was a prophecy of 
what your next year is going to be, the one that you 
intend to pattern after, I should hope to see every 
hand reach out for the one that is clear all the way 
through. 

Did you ever think what a great thing it is for 
these bodies of ours to go unharmed and unhurt 
through one day \ How many accidents might hap- 
pen to them, and how many diseases might attack 
them, as we eat, and sit still, and walk, and ride, 
and work, and sleep ! 

And what a great thing it is for the spirit and 
soul to go unharmed and unhurt through one day, 
when they are surrounded by so many evil influ- 
ences and assailed by so many temptations ! 

And how much greater thing it is for spirit, soul, 
and body, to be kept unharmed and unhurt for a 
whole week, and a whole month, and a whole year ! 
And if they can only be preserved blameless until 
Christ comes for us what a great thing that would 
be! 

Some of you know men who went through the 
war and had long, hard marches, and suffered from 
hunger and thirst and cold and heat, and were in 
many battles, and heard the whizzing of many bul- 
lets and the bursting of many shells, and yet came 
home without a wound or scratch, with bodies 



108 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

whole and sound. And how glad they and their 
friends were ! Surely they must have felt that 
God's hand was in it. 

And some of those brave boys saw all manner of 
sin and wickedness, and were tempted a thousand 
times and in a thousand ways, yet they came home 
with their souls clear and pure. How thankful their 
friends must have been ! Surely they must have 
asked and received help from God. 

Life is a battlefield, and 1887 will be a part of it 
for us. Dangers will beset us ; temptations will 
assail ; bullets will fly ; dynamite bombs of evil will 
burst. " A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten 
thousand at thy right hand." Surely it is a great 
thing that we ask for you when we pray that your 
whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved 
blameless through one whole year and through life. 

Can it be done ? Yes. The verse following the 
text says: " Faithful is he that calleth you, who 
also will do it. " Make the Lord thy refuge, and the 
Most High thy habitation, and he will give his 
angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. 
He, with your help, will protect your body from 
sickness and harm just so far as is good for you ; 
and you, with his help, may keep the soul clear and 
pure from one end of the year to the other. 

"The opening year his mercy shows, 
Let mercy crown it till it close." 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

RESURRECTION CRYSTALS. — A SERMON FOR EASTER 
SUNDAY. 

"There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body." — 1 Cor., 
xt : 44. 

It has been a common thing to illustrate the truth 
of the resurrection by facts drawn from animal life 
and plant life. Let us, on this Easter morning, see 
if we cannot get some suggestions about the resur- 
rection from the crystals. 

The crystals of snow fall on the ground, and by 

and by are changed into water. The water changes 

. into invisible vapor, which ascends into the air and 

sooner or later comes down again as crystals, a sort 

of continually recurring resurrection. 

If you take crystals of sugar or salt and dissolve 
them in water they disappear from your sight. You 
cannot now see them, but you can take that water 
and boil it down, and then cool it, and the crystals 
will form again so that you can see them. Is not 
that one kind of resurrection ? 

A few years ago one of Faraday's workmen 
dropped a beautiful silver goblet into a jar of acid. 
The acid dissolved the goblet so that apparently 
(109) 



110 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

nothing was left of it. But Faraday came into the 
room and told them what to put into the mixture. 
They put it in and then the silver was deposited on 
the bottom of the dish. It was scraped together a 
shapeless mass, but it was sent to the silversmith and 
made over again into a silver goblet. And was it 
not the same goblet? 

I have a crystal of beryl that is partly decayed, 
but a part, and the most precious part, of what was 
eaten or dissolved out, came together and formed a 
beautiful little crystal gem, of the rare mineral 
phcnacite, that rests on the decayed crystal. 

There are some crystals that are largely made up 
of some coarse material that is easily seen, but run- 
ning all through it are little fine threads and scales 
of some finer substance that is not at first seen, ex- 
cept as you get glimpses of it in spots on the sur- 
face. Put that crystal into a certain acid and the 
coarser part will be dissolved, and from its death 
will arise a crystal of the same shape and size, but 
lighter and more delicate, made of the finer sub- 
stance that you could scarcely see before. 

Paul says that there is a natural body, and, also, 
that there is a spiritual body, not simply will be one, 
but there is one. So I think that we each have now 
a natural body and a spiritual body. We cannot 
see the spiritual body now, unless we catch a glimpse 
of it through the face when it shines as the face of 



RESURRECTION CRYSTALS. Ill 

Moses shone when he came down from the mount, 
and as the face of Christ shone when he was on the 
mount of transfiguration. But when the natural 
body dies ; when it decays and goes back to dust, 
then the spiritual body is set free. That body is very 
light and delicate, probably not subject to the law of 
gravitation, but strong and incorruptible and immor- 
tal. It will never be tired, never be sick, and never 
suffer pain, if it belong to the righteous dead. And 
doubtless those bodies can see and recognize each 
other, and can move at will through space. 

Sometimes the eyes of the spiritual body are 
opened even before the natural body is dead, and 
then the dying saint can see — and wonders that 
others do not see — the spiritual bodies of departed 
friends and of angelic beings. 

When these flesh and blood bodies decay we do 
not expect to see them again, for flesh and blood 
cannot inherit the kingdom of God. They go back 
to dust. But we do expect to see the spiritual body, 
of the same size and shape, with the same features, 
purified and glorified, just as the interior crystal re- 
tains the shape of the coarser crystal that was dis- 
solved from around it. The mortal will then put on 
immortality, and death shall be swallowed up in vic- 
tor v. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE COLORS OF CRYSTALS. — A SERMON FOR MAY DAY. 

"One star differeth from another star in glory. — 1 Corinthians, 
xv. : 41. 

Yes, the stars differ from each other in glory, but 
they are all glorious. One way in which they differ 
is in their color. The telescope shows that the sky 
is studded with brilliant gems of different colors. 
Some stars are of a beautiful red, others of a dark 
blue ; some have an orange color, others are emerald 
green, still others are yellow, and so on in great va- 
riety. 

You are all familiar with the great variety of color 
among the flowers, but perhaps you do not know 
that there is just as much variety among the crys- 
tals. We find among them every color and shade 
of color. 

If you will come to my house some day I will 
show you jet black crystals of quartz, velvety black 
crystals of iron, tourmalines of a beautiful cinna- 
mon brown, and, also, of an emerald green, diopsides 
and fluorites of a rich grass green, cochineal-red 
crystals of copper, rose red rhodocrosites, blood red 
garnets and rubies, golden yellow topazes, purple 
(112) 



THE COLORS OF CRYSTALS. US 

amethysts, bluish-green beryls, dark blue azurites, 
sky-blue turqoise and eelestite, snow white arago- 
nite, and crystals of other colors. 

I can show you different colors, as bright red and 
bright green, in the same crystal, or plates of feld- 
spar that show a beautiful play of colors on the sur- 
face, or opals from whose center, as you move them y 
are darted exquisite fiery flashes of brilliant color. 
Some crystals show different colors according as you 
see them by sunlight or lamplight, and others show 
different colors as you look at them in different di- 
rections. 

So one crystal differs from another crystal in color, 
but they are all beautiful, and it is difficult to tell 
which one you like the best. 

How good our heavenly Father was to make such 
a variety of beautiful colors in the flowers, and the 
stars, and the birds, and the crystals, to delight our 
eyes and add to our happiness ! How dull it would 
be if everything was of one color ! God fills the 
sky with beautiful flowers, and dots the earth with 
brilliant stars — for stars are the flowers of heaven, 
and flowers are the stars of earth — and thick 
through the rocks he has scattered brightly colored 
crystals, which you can easily imagine are petrified 
flowers or fallen stars. 

Now, when we remember that all these brilliant 
colors found on the earth and in the earth, on the 



114 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

flower and in the crystal, come from the pure white 
ray of light in the sunbeam, and that, as a rule, they 
are seen to best advantage in the sunlight, we can 
learn, I think, a lesson from these many colored 
gems. 

The pure white ray of love that shines so brightly 
upon us from the Sun of righteousness, is to be ab- 
sorbed by us, taken into our hearts, and there sepa- 
rated into the beautiful graces of the Christian life, 
each having its own peculiar color. And these colors, 
one or two or more, are to shine out of our lives so 
that our fellow-men will see them. One will differ 
from another in glory, but all will be beautiful be- 
cause they come from Christ. 

A crystal prism takes the ray of light that falls 
upon it, and divides it into its different colors, and 
puts one color here and another there on the oppo- 
site wall. So our hearts, like crystal prisms, are to 
catch the ray of love, separate it into its colors, and 
put them one here and another there, as they arc 
needed. 

Joy is one color, patience another ; goodness, hu- 
mility, truthfulness, purity, faith, temperance, char- 
ity, — these are others. We should all have all of 
these, but one of them is very apt to shine out 
brighter than the others. No two Christians have 
exactly the same experience. Our experiences differ 
in glory, but the}' all tell of Christ. 



THE COLORS OF CRYSTALS. 115 

One Christian's experience has taken its special 
coloring from some great sorrow, another from some 
great joy ; one from sickness, another from health ; 
one from poverty patiently borne, another from 
riches used in doing good ; one from persecution, 
another from smiles and good will. But all these 
experiences are needed. 

In one of my books on gems there is a picture in 
color of a magnificent crown that belongs to the 
empress of Russia. It is made up of a great many 
very precious stones of many different colors, red, 
white, yellow, green, and blue. It is much more 
beautiful than if they were all of one color. Some 
of the gems are large, and some are small, but each 
one helps to make the crown more beautiful. 

The subjects of King Jesus are making a glorious 
crown with which to crown him Lord of all. You 
can each add something to that crown. You can 
cultivate one or more Christian graces that shall 
cause your soul to shine out from that crown with 
brilliant colors. 

It gladdens our eyes, on this beautiful Sabbath 
and May -day morning, to see the earth dotted with 
] neautif ul flowers. It will gladden the Master's heart 
if he can look down upon our lives and see them all 
bright and beautiful with Christian graces, that re- 
flect the o^lorv of his love. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

KEEPING THE HEART BY GIVING IT. A SERMON FOR 

children's DAY. 

"Keep thy heart with all diligence." — Proverbs iv. : 23. 
"Son, give me thy heart." — Proverbs xxiii. : 26. 

On this Children's Day I bring to you a lesson 
from the crystal, which we do not get so much from 
the crystal itself, as from its value and the danger of 
losing it. It is the lesson of 'keeping by giving. 

If you have a clear crystal, or a precious stone of 
an} r kind, you need to keep it carefully. I have one 
crystal that I have to keep shut up closely in a bottle. 
If exposed to the air it crumbles. I have another 
that needs to be kept in the dark, for fear it will 
lose its bright color if exposed to the light. I have 
another with a drop of water inside of it, and 
if I should leave it in a very cold place in winter, 
the water would freeze and break the crystal. One 
man, who had a large number of such crystals, worth 
a great many dollars, left them one night where they 
all froze and were spoiled. 

If we are not careful we are liable to lose valuable 
specimens. I found a rare and beautiful ciystal of 
zircon once near Pike's Peak. I wrapped it in pa- 
die) 



KEEPING THE HEART BY GIVING IT. 117 

per and put it in my pocket, but when I reached 
home it was gone. In carelessly pulling something 
else out of my pocket I had lost it. Then if you 
have a choice crystal you need to keep it carefully 
from being scratched and rubbed by coarser crystals 
and stones. This crystal that I have been using for 
a text I keep in a little box by itself. When I put 
it in my pocket I wrap it in paper, so that the sharp 
edges may not be broken or marred in any way. 

Then there is danger of precious stones being 
stolen. They often are stolen. Sometimes a valuable 
diamond is snatched from a lady's hand or neck in 
the street and in broad daylight. Sometimes they 
are taken out of the drawer or trunk. Those who 
have very valuable jewels keep them in an iron safe. 
In Europe some persons have millions of dollars 
worth of precious stones. One man built a high 
stone wall all around his palace, and took many other 
precautions, so that no robber might get at his gems. 

The beautiful crown and all the crown gems that 
belong to the royal house of England, are kept in 
the tower of London, under lock and key, behind 
massive stone walls that are guarded by faithful 
soldiers. Sometimes the owner of a valuable gem 
has concealed it in his hair, or even swallowed it, so 
that it might not be taken from him. Nations have 
sometimes gone to war in order to get or to keep a 
very precious gem. 



118 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

Now, how would you keep a very precious stone ? 
My little boy had a choice crystal given to him. He 
kept it himself and thus lost it. If he had given it 
to me to keep for him, he probably would not have 
lost it. 

Suppose you lived in a city that was full of robbers 
and burglars, and in a wooden house that could 
easily be broken into, and suppose you were obliged 
to go every day and night along streets where you 
were liable to be knocked down and robbed. There 
is a rich jeweler in the city who has a strong iron 
safe, in a strong stone house, that is surrounded by 
a high stone wall, and guarded by faithful soldiers. 
That jeweler makes you a present of a beautiful 
sparkling diamond, that is worth ten thousand dol- 
lars. As he gives it to you he says : ' ' Now keep 
this diamond with all diligence. Let no one cheat 
you out of it ; let no one steal it, or rob you of it, 
for it is very valuable, and when you are old, or in 
great need, it will be of great use to you." 

You thank him and promise to take care of it ; 
you put it in your pocket and go to your house. 
But the robbers aud thieves learn that you have it, 
and they lay their plans to get it away from you. 
You enjoy looking at the diamond, but you are in 
constant fear of losing it. You can hardly sleep 
nights. Every sound disturbs you. You tremble 
every time you go on the streets, and you imagine 



KEEPING THE HEART BY GIVING IT. 119 

you see a robber in every stranger that approaches 
you. You feel sure that the diamond will be lost 
unless you put it in a safe place. 

Finally you go to your friend, the jeweler, and 
ask him what you shall do. " Give it to me," he 
says, " and I will put it in my iron safe where no 
one can steal it. It will be perfectly safe there ; you 
can trust me; and you can come and see it and show 
it to your friends whenever you wish. " So you give 
it to him to keep for you. It is yours in his care. 
It is his to keep for you. You go away with a light 
heart, feeling that you are just as rich as you were 
before, and that your treasure is safe in the hands of 
your friend whom you trust. You can laugh now 
at the thieves and robbers. They can attack you 
and hurt your body, but they cannot get your trea- 
sure. The noises do not keep you awake nights any 
longer. You sleep sweetly, for your treasure is safe. 

Just so it is with the heart, or soul. God gives it 
to you and says: "Keep it with all diligence, for 
out of it are the issues of life." Life, soul life, 
eternal life, eternal happiness, depend upon your 
keeping your heart safely. The world is full of 
robbers and thieves who would steal your heart and 
turn it over to Satan. They are after it all the time, 
and they will surely get it unless you put it in a safe 
place. There is only one such place in the universe, 
and that is in God's hands. 



120 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

God knows what the danger is, and he sends Christ 
to you with this message : "Son, give me thy 
heart." Give it to me and I will keep it. It will 
be yours in my care. It will be mine to keep for 
you. Mine and thine it shall be. Can you trust 
Christ with your heart? I think you can, and I 
know you can. Paul thought he could, and he 
knew it, too. Listen to what he said, and then say 
it after him. ' ' I know in whom I havebelieved (trust- 
ed), and am persuaded that he is able to keep that 
which I have committed unto him against that day." 

Oh ! then give your fresh young hearts to Christ. 
Give all your heart's best affections, all your heart's 
best love, all your powers of mind, and all your will 
power, to Christ, and he will keep them safe and 
pure forever. In his hands they will never tarnish, 
never fade, never crumble, never grow old, but they 
will grow brighter and better, and be fresh with the 
dew of eternal youth. 

But if you try to keep your heart without Christ's 
help, you will surely lose it. Satan will get it. 
While you think that you are keeping it, it will 
really be his, and in your hands and his hands it 
will lose its fresh beauty ; it will decay ; it will be- 
come a corrupt and rotten thing, fit only to be cast 
out upon the rubbish heap of the universe. 

Do you know how careless some people are with 
that most precious thing, the soul ? Methinks I am 



KEEPING THE HEART BY GIVING IT. 121 

standing on the deck of a noble vessel. She is cross- 
ing the Atlantic and is out of sight of land. There 
stands beside me a man of great weath, but he has 
sold all his possessions and bought a beautiful dia- 
mond worth a half million dollars. It is all he has 
in the world. It is a peerless gem, flashing from its 
brilliant faces the undimmed light of the sun. 

He holds it in the palm of his hand ; he passes it 
round for the crowd of strangers to examine it. 
Presently he leans over the deck-railing and holds 
the gem over the water. Growing more careless and 
reckless he tosses it into the air and catches it with 
both hands. Next time he tosses it higher, and now 
he catches it with one hand. Higher and higher it 
goes at every throw as the man grows more and 
more daring. At last he tosses it high up in the air ; 
it is coming down ; will he catch it this time ? Yes 
— no ; yes ; it has struck his hand, but ah ! it slips 
through his fingers ; it is out of his reach ; it strikes 
the water ; it sparkles for a moment on the surface ; 
it gleams the next moment from under the wave, and 
then it sinks down into the dark depths of ocean, 
where no human power can reach it. 

And who is the man at whose folly and reckless- 
ness we all stand amazed ? Alas ! alas ! who is it 
not? It is you, ungodly young man. It is you, 
thoughtless young woman. It is you, backslidden 
professor of religion. It is you, O careless child f 



122 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

All the hope and all the wealth of your eternity lies 
folded up in that soul of yours. You are crossing 
the ocean of life, and it is your business to carry 
your soul safely over the waters. 

"A charge to keep you have, 

A God to glorify, 
A never dying soul to save, 

And fit it for the sky." 

But you are trifling with that soul. You are 
tossing it up and down when it is in danger of slip- 
ping through your fingers at any moment. And by 
and by it will slip through, and with the clammy 
sweat of death upon your brow, you will clutch af- 
ter it, and miss it as you sink into the depths of 
eternal woe. 

O young men and young women ! O boys and 
girls ! Keep your hearts with all diligence, and keep 
them by giving them to the Lord Jesus Christ. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

FREEDOM FROM SIN. — A SERMON FOR INDEPEND- 
ENCE DAY. 

" The truth shall make you free." — John viii. : 32. 

In my talks about crystals I have several times 
referred to finding crystals in the ground, or in the 
rock, and setting them free from their prison cells. 
But sometimes the crystal sets the finder free. In 
the early days of diamond hunting in Brazil most of 
the diamond hunters were slaves. If a slave found 
a diamond weighing seventeen and a half carats he 
was crowned with a wreath of flowers, and given a 
new suit of clothes, and made a free man. 

The poet represents a diamond telling its own his- 
tory, and saying : 

" This my story — mine. He found me 

On a morning calm and still ; 
He, a thick-lipped ebon bondman— 

In the sands of the Brazil. 

High he leapt, and loud he shouted : 

' 'Tis a twenty carat stone ! 
How it glitters ! Blessed mother ! 

Now my manhood is my own V 
(123) 



124 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

For the finding broke his shackles, 

And my purity and size, 
By the custom of the miners, 

Bought his freedom as a prize." 

If you were a slave and could get your freedom 
by finding a large diamond, wouldn't you search for 
it very diligently ? 

Amethyst means without drunkenness. Long ago 
men thought if they wore an amethyst it would keep 
them from becoming drunk, and would cure them 
of drunkenness. If it only would do so how gladly 
would I give all my crystals of amethyst to you 
boys and girls that you might wear them and never 
become drunkards. 

The pledge of total abstinence from all intoxi- 
cating drinks, if faithfully kept, is the amethystine 
jewel that will keep you from being drunkards. 
And if you know of any man who is a slave to 
strong drink, get him to wear that jewel and it will 
make him free. 

But wouldn't it be better to find a jewel that will 
set us free from all sin, from every evil habit, and 
free us forever from the yoke of Satan ? I think so, 
and there is such a jewel, and we can all find it. 
The text gives us its name. It is truth, the truth. 
And what is the truth 1 Has it any other name ? 

Christ, the Son of God, said: "The truth shall 
set you free," and he also said : " I am the truth." 



FREEDOM FROM SIN. 125 

So truth is another name for Christ. And he said 
furthermore : "If therefore the Son shall make you 
free, ye shall be free indeed." 

When the slave fonnd a large diamond, in one 
sense the diamond set him free ; in another sense his 
owner set him free ; and in another sense by the 
finding of the diamond he set himself free. 

Christ is the Truth, the precious gem that sets you 
free, and if you find Christ you thereby set yourself 
free. 

And I assure you that you can find that jewel of 
freedom. There is one for you. But you must 
search for it. You must seek her as men seek silver ; 
you must search for her as men search for hidden 
treasures. 

People sometimes say to me : "01 wish I knew 
where I could find some beautiful crystals !" I could 
tell them where they are to be found, but if they go 
there they will have to dig for them. Job said : 
"O that I knew where I might find him /" John 
the Baptist found him and said : ' ' Behold the Lamb 
of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." 
Peter and John, the apostle, heard John say this, 
-and they beheld, and followed, and went where he 
•dwelt, and abode with him that day, and forever 
after he abode in their hearts and made them free. 

A drinking man, who has often dug for and found 
the precious stones of the earth, came to see me one 



126 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

day. He said he was a slave to the use of intoxi- 
cating drinks, and that he had no hope of ever be- 
coming a free man again. He had tried several 
times, but had failed, and the chains were wound 
around him more tightly than ever. How I pitied 
him ! I told him that I could not set him free, and 
that no earthly power could, nothing but the power 
of One who is mighty to save. But he did not be- 
lieve in Christ and would not seek his help. 

When the slaves of the South were set free some 
of them doubted it. Others said : " We be free ; 
Massa Linkum says so." "Yes," said the good 
Lincoln, "you are free, and all the power of this 
great government will protect you in your freedom. " 

O children of the great King, we are free. Jesus, 
the great Emancipator, says so. And if we are loyal 
to him ; if he abides in our hearts ; if we wear him 
on our lives, he will never let Satan get dominion 
over us again. We shall he free indeed. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE WISDOM OF WINNING SOULS. — A SERMON FOR 
MISSIONARY DAY. 

"He that winneth souls is wise. — Proverbs xi. : 30. 

One of the pleasantest recreations that I know of , 
for body and mind, is hunting crystals, especially 
those crystals which, on account of their beauty or 
rarity, are called precious stones, or gerns. There 
is real fun in it, a healthy, innocent fun. And some- 
times it is quite exciting, especially when you pull 
out of the ground a crystal worth anywhere from 
one to one hundred dollars, or more. 

When I was camping in Pleasant Park I took the 
children one day and went two miles after speci 
mens. When we reached the spot and the children 
saw the beautiful specimens of rose satin spar 
scattered around on the ground they made the hills 
echo with the chorus of ohs ! that came from their 
lips. I think children could hardly be happier than 
they were during the hour that they .spent on that 
hill top. 

A few weeks ago I was in the mountains on a 
missionary trip. After my work was done I went 

(127) 



128 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

to a wild place in the heart of the Rockies for a 
day of mental rest. Near timber line on the ' Crest 
of the Continent ' I sat for hours on the dump of an 
unworked mine, breaking stone and letting beautiful 
red crystals out of their prison cells. My cares were 
behind me — over the great mountains. My hands 
were bruised and scratched, but my mind rested, and 
my soul rejoiced as my thoughts dwelt on Him who 
carved the mountains, and painted those beautiful 
crystals, and placed them there long ago for me to 
find. 

Sometimes when hunting crystals we find a great 
many, more than we can carry away. A friend and 
myself once found so many quartz crystals that we 
had to hire a team to take them to the depot. At 
other times and in other places I have hunted for 
hours without finding a crystal worth keeping. I 
remember hunting once near Pike's Peak for a very 
rare gem. I dug in the gravel several hours and 
found only one or two little crystals, but they fully 
paid me for my day's work. 

Now suppose I should invite all you children to 
go to a distant range of mountains to hunt for pre- 
cious stones. I promise to go along with you and 
protect you from Indians and wild beasts. I promise 
to pay your expenses in getting there, to provide the 
tools for digging, to pay you a fair salary, and more 
than that, to give you or else share with } t ou, all the 



•THE WISDOM OF WINNING SOULS. 129 

gems that you find. How many of you would go I 
I think all of you would wish to go. You would 
say : ' ' That is a very generous offer, and although 
there will be separation from friends for awhile, and 
some hard work, and occasional discouragements, 
yet for the sake of the pleasure, and excitement, 
and new scenes, and especially for the sake of the 
gems, I think I will go." 

But a more generous offer than that is made to all 
of us. If you should bring together all the precious 
stones that were ever found, and add to them all 
those that are yet in the earth, not one of them, nor 
all of them together, would be worth so much as the 
soul of a single heathen child, on which God's im- 
age is stamped, and for whom Christ died. Upon 
that soul God has set a price, the price of the life of 
his only-begotten Son, and under the influence of 
Christ's gospel that soul can receive a mental and 
moral polish that shall cause it to shine as the stars 
forever and ever. 

" He that winneth souls is wise," and if, in foreign 
lands or in your own land, you can find one such 
gem and turn it unto righteousness, you too will shine 
as the stars forever and ever. Christ will share with 
you through eternity the joy and blessedness of that 
redeemed soul. It will adorn your crown, and shine 
in his diadem. 

I have bright gems from Ceylon, from Siam, from 



130 CLEAR AS CRYBTAL. 

India, and from Africa, but if I owned all the gems 
that those lands of gems ever produced, I would ex- 
change them all for the privilege of leading to Christ 
one dark-browed boy or girl from those lands. 

Missionaries are gem hunters. The church says 
to them : " You go to those heathen lands ; we will 
pay your expenses and support you ; we will follow 
you with our prayers ; Christ will be with you to the 
end of the world, and all the gems that you find, all 
the souls that you win, shall be yours and ours and 
his." 

To some of these soul-winners, like Titus Coan, 
it is given to gather a great cluster of gems for the 
Master. Others, though laboring hard through 
weary years, find only a few, but they are opening 
the mines ; they are blasting off the surface rock, 
and they will share the triumph and rejoice in the 
success of those who follow them. 

I hope that some of you children will hear the cry 
of the Master as he calls for laborers, for gem-hunt- 
ers, and that you will answer gladly : "Here am I, 
send me, send me." 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

BLOOD AND WATER. — A SERMON FOR COMMUNION 
DAY. 

V But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forth- 
with came there out blood and water." — John xix. : 34. 

It was Christ whose side was pierced with a spear, 
and it was done after he was dead, as he hung upon 
the cross. Blood and water came out of his side. 
It is said that when a person suffers long continued 
and intense agony that a colorless fluid like water 
gathers in the membrane that surrounds the heart. 
We may believe then that the water and the blood 
both came from the heart of Christ, and that they 
both represent the agony which he suffered for us. 

This clear crystal that I have showed you so many 
times is as clear and pure as any drop of water you 
ever saw. You can almost believe that it was, as 
the ancients supposed, a drop of water frozen unu- 
sually hard. You remember that that was why they 
called it crystal, their word for ice being ' ' Jcrustal- 
los." 

Then here is another crystal — I found it in the 
mountains last summer — of a beautiful red color, 
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132 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

like blood. How beautifully it contrasts with the 
colorless crystal ! And I have, too, a little carne- 
lian, blood red, and about as large as a good sized 
drop of blood. It was polished before Christ was 
born, and when Christ shed his blood this gem was 
lying in the palace of Sardanapalus, a few hundred 
miles from Jerusalem. We can almost imagine that 
it is a drop of petrified blood that has come down 
to us from those ancient times when so much blood 
was shed. 

Now we will let these two crystals, one colorless 
like water and the other red like blood, speak to us 
of the water and the blood that flowed for us from 
Christ's pierced side. 

By the blood of Christ we are saved. " Ye know 
that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, 
as silver and gold, * * but with the precious 
blood of Christ as of a Lamb without blemish and 
without spot." It is by the blood of Christ, too, 
that we are cleansed and made whiter than snow. 
" The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanse th us 
from all sin." "Glory and dominion," says John, 
u be unto him that loved us and washed us from our 
sins in his own blood." 

Then, after he has redeemed and cleansed us from 
sin, Christ opens for our souls a fountain of the wa- 
ter of life. And he asks those who thirst to come 
and take of that water of life freely. 



BLOOD AND WATER. 133 

Years ago in an eastern city a little boy was stolen 
from his parents and they have never been able to 
find him. Suppose they should find him the slave 
of some bad man, and find him covered with filth 
and disease. They pay, we will suppose, a large 
sum of money to redeem him, and then they wash 
him, and put clean clothes on him, and they nurse 
him and doctor him until he is well. 

Is that all they do ? No, indeed. They educate 
him ; they buy for him books and pictures ; they 
travel with him ; they commune often with him ; 
they give him every good thing that he needs, and 
make him as happy as they can, until he almost for- 
gets the old life of slavery and disease and filth. 

So when Christ redeems us from Satan and 
cleanses us from sin, he shows us, as he did to John, 
' ' a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, pro- 
ceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb." 
And that water sparkles with life ; it bubbles with 
innocent joy ; the peace of its liquid depths cannot 
be fathomed ; it brings us the fullness of joy and 
the pleasures which forevermore are at the right 
hand of God. 

Young friends, are you saved and cleansed by the 
blood of Christ ? And are you taking freely of the 
water of life ? Can you look on one of these crys- 
tals and say : "It reminds me of the precious blood 
by which I was redeemed and cleansed ? " And then 



134 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

can you look on the other and say : " It is clear 
like the river of life that flows by the throne of God, 
along whose banks I shall walk and worship for- 



ever 



? " 



Can you joyfully exclaim : 

" Hallelujah ! ' tis done, I believe on the Son, 
I am saved by the blood of the crucified One. 

And can you heartily say : 

"Yes, we'll gather at the river, 
Where bright angel feet have trod, 

With its crystal tide forever 
Flowing by the throne of God V 

Let me ask two more questions suggested by these 
crystals. Has the water of baptism, clear and pure, 
and in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
ever been applied, according to Christ's command, 
to your body ( If not, why not ? And have you 
ever sat with the Lord's people around the Lord's 
table and drank that fruit of the vine which repre- 
sents the blood of Christ shed for you, and thus 
shewed forth his death ? If not, why not \ 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

ALCOHOL AND CRYSTALS. — A SERMON FOR TEMPER- 
ANCE DAY. 

"And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crys- 
tal, proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb." — 
Revelation xxii. : 1. 

As the crystals have given us lessons for various oth- 
er special occasions through the year, let us see if we 
can not get from them a lesson for temperance day. 

In the first place there is no alcohol in the crys- 
tals. When they were made, a good many different 
things that have long, hard names were used. Some- 
times only one thing was used, as in gold ; and some- 
times, as in crystals of tourmaline, fourteen or more 
different things were all mixed together. And chem- 
ists can take the crystal, and dissolve it, and pick out 
the different materials, and weigh them, and tell just 
how much of each was used. But it is a fact that 
they never find any alcohol in any mineral or crys- 
tal. If you should take a thousand different crys- 
tals and pound them up fine, and boil them, and 
distill them, you would get some pure water, but not 
a drop of alcohol. 

(135) 



136 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

Sometimes little drops of fluid get caught in the 
crystal when it is being made, and are kept there 
closely shut up. If you break the crystal you will 
find, sometimes a drop of water, and sometimes a 
drop of oil, both very useful things, but you will 
never find a drop of alcohol. If you did it would 
be a wonderful curiosity. 

And not only do" you never find alcohol in the 
crystals, but also you never find any crystals of 
alcohol, and you~cannot make them. Nature has 
six different ways, or systems, of crystallizing things. 
The first way — the cube and forms derived from it 
— is the simplest, and she uses it for gold and silver 
and iron and the diamond, and for other useful and 
precious things. But she will not let alcohol take 
that shape, or any other crystal shape if she can help 
it, 

Water makes more beautiful and wonderful crys- 
tals, and of greater variety, and in greater number, 
than any other substance, as we shall learn in our 
talk about snow crystals. But the wonderful fairy 
that presides over the crystal world utterly refuses 
to make any crystal of any shape out of such a mean, 
wicked thing as alcohol. 

Alcohol pretends to be very friendly to water ; it 
has an affinity for it, as the chemists say, but it 
spoils all the water that it touches. It has an 
u affinity," too, for some men and boys, and for 



ALCOHOL AND CRYSTALS. 187 

some women and girls, but if they show an affinity 
for it, it will surely spoil them. Their only safety 
is in letting it entirely alone. 

Pure alcohol looks very much like water, but it 
does not smell like it, nor taste like it ; and if you 
touch a match to it you see at once that it has a 
strong affinity for fire. It has been called ' ; liquid 
fire,'' and also " liquid damnation." It is very sug- 
gestive of the fire that is never quenched, for alcohol 
never freezes. The most intense cold ever known 
does not freeze it. 

The apostle John, in his vision of heaven, saw a 
pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, flowing 
out from the throne of God and the Lamb. On its 
banks grew a wonderful tree that yielded twelve 
kinds of rare fruit every month, and even the leaves 
of that tree were full of healing power. I think one 
of the fruits of the tree that grew by the crystal 
water, was what Paul gives as one of the fruits of 
the Spirit, temperance. 

If John could have looked over into the depths 
of the pit of woe, I think he would have seen some- 
thinglike a river of burning alcohol, a river of death, 
flowing out from the throne of Satan, and spreading 
its lava tide of woe over this fair earth. And on its 
banks he would have seen the tree of death yielding 
enormous quantities of its more than twelve manner of 
fruits : adultery, fornication, uncleanness, licentious- 



138 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

ness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emula- 
tions, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, 
thefts, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such 
like. 

We do not want that kind of fruit, we will 
keep away from that tree, and from that river, and 
from all the little streams that flow into it under such 
names as cider, wine, and beer. 

The tree of life is the tree for us ; of its fruit we 
will eat ; and the pure river of the water of life, clear 
as crystal, is the one on whose banks we will walk 
— and walk forever. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

SNOW CRYSTALS. — A SERMON FOR THANKSGIVING 
TIME. 

"Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?" — Job 
xxviii : 22. 

Water is a mineral, as much so as quartz, or iron, 
or gold. Only it does not take so much heat to turn 
it into liquid or vapor as it does for most minerals. 
Water is the most useful mineral in the world, and 
when I see it foaming in the mountain streams, or 
shining in the icicle, or spread like a white coverlid 
over the earth, or sailing by in the fleecy clouds, I 
think it one of the most beautiful of all minerals. 
Certainly there are no more beautiful crystals than 
snow crystals. 

Sometimes, when the snow is falling, I go out and 
look at the snow crystals with a microscope as they 
fall on a piece of black cloth. The crystals are six- 
sided and are twinned in six-rayed stars. Every one 
is on the plan of six. They are very perfect and 
some of them are wondrously beautiful. 

There is a wonderful variety among them, almost 
every snow-storm seeming to have its own peculiar 
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140 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

crystals. About one thousand forms of snow- 
crystals have been observed and described, and 
doubtless there are thousands more. I have pictures 
of more than two hundred different forms, yet they 
are all made on the same six-sided plan. 

Scientists tell us that snow-crystals, on close 
examination, are found to be made up of minute 
colored crystals, some red, some green, others blue 
or purple. All the colors of the rainbow are found 
in the little snow stars that fall to the earth, and this 
is another illustration of the fact that the colors of 
the rainbow combine to form the purest white. 

And what myriads of these crystals God makes 
in every snow storm ! I look out of my stndy 
window upon a hundred miles or more of the Front 
Range of the Rocky Mountains, fifty and seventy- 
five miles away, and lo ! they are all covered with 
unnumbered myriads of snow-crystals. 

And those little crystals, so small, so thin, so 
delicate and frail, vanishing as you breathe upon 
them, what power they have when they are united ! 
They obstruct and defy the rushing train ; they carry 
death and destruction down the mountain side ; their 
melted drops unite and change the face of continents. 
And what blessings they bring us, too ! Where 
would be the bountiful harvests, over which we all 
rejoice at this season of the year in Colorado, had 
it not been for those vast beds of snow on the moun- 



SAO W CR YS TA LS. 141 

tains, which all through the hot summer have been 
sending down streams of water with which the farm- 
er irrigates his fields ? 

I said that these crystals from the sky were perfect. 
When water crystallizes in the ground, or even on 
the ground, the crystals are imperfect. The dirt 
and stones and rubbish interfere with them while they 
are forming. And that is the reason why we rarely 
find perfect crystals of any mineral in the earth. 

But up in the sky there is perfect freedom. The 
little particles can come together and form a perfect 
crystal without anything to hinder them. And this 
is the lesson that we learn from the snow crystal, 
that in heaven we shall be free from temptation, and 
sin, and all the rubbish of this earthly life, so that 
our souls can take perfect shape according to God's 
perfect plan. Our souls will not all be exactly alike, 
any more than the snow crystals are, but they will 
all be on the same plan, and that plan is Christ. 
We shall be like him and have his image. 

In spite of obstacles we should aim at perfection 
in this life, and come as near to it as we can, while 
in heaven we may certainly reach it. The snow- 
crystal, perfect up in the sky, comes down and 
mixes with the earth, and becomes of the earth, 
earthy. But out of the miry clay of this earthly 
life, God lifts us up, and ever upward, that we may 
be perfected, and be perfect, in his presence. 



142 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

And some of these thoughts are expressed in the 
following poem, which w T as written after a snow- 
storm twenty-two years ago. It was suggested by 
the myriad snow crystals shining in the sun. 

THE SNOW CRYSTALS. 

Ten million shining crystals 

Lie on the frozen ground, 
Strewn by a lavish giver, 

And heaped in many a mound. 

Ten million brilliant diamonds, 
With their faces so pure and bright, 

Reflecting back undimned 
The sunbeams dazzling light. 

Ten million sparkling eyes 

Look out on every side, 
All dancing so merrily at the thought 

Of their joyous and happy ride, 

Their ride from far up in the sky 
Clear down to this mundane sphere,. 

And they all agree 'tis a merry thing 
To come and visit us here. 

But soon the warm wind will come, 

And the sun will send his rays 
To bear them noiselessly back 

To the home of their early days. 

But some are found in the mud, 

Which stains their virgin whiteness ; 

They join themselves to the dust of earth,. 
And lose their heavenly brightness. 



SNO W CM YS TALS. 143 

And some of the flakes will play truant, 

And, pretending to lose their way, 
On the bosom of a little rivulet 

Will silently glide away. 

And when they have journeyed many a day, 

They'll find themselves at last, 
When it is all too late to return, 

On the ocean wide and vast. 

And then their hearts will fail them, 

And they'll think that never again 
They'll meet with their gay companions 

And float in the air with them. 

Then the sun — he will see them, 

As he rides through the crystal sky, 
And, sending a warm, bright sunbeam, 

Will lift them up on high. 

And they'll greet again at home 

Their little fairy mates, 
And vow to never pass again 

Beyond their ether gates. 



Millions of radiant souls 
Are living on this earth, 

Reflecting back the glory 

Of Him who gave them birth. 

And millions more are lying 
Crushed in the mud and slime, 

With all their splendor tarnished 
By the blackness of their crime. 



144 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

Millions of eyes are sparkling 
At the merry thought of life, 

But millions more are darkening 
At the thought of endless strife ; 

Of a strife that will never end 
Till they lay them down to die, 

And are tenderly borne by angels 
To a home of rest on high. 

From God our souls have come, 
To God our souls must go ; 

Hasting away we'll disappear 
As melts the summer snow. 

If some should lose their way, 
And be borne far off by sin, 

We'll ask our God to send his Son 
To bear them back to him. 

And when 'tis ours to meet above, 
We'll wander off no more, 

But, bound by bands of lasting love, 
We'll stay within the pearly door. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

CHANGED CRYSTALS. ANOTHER SERMON FOR MIS- 
SIONARY DAY. 

"Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteous- 
ness." — Luke xvi : 9. 

Our next lesson from the crystal is that we should 
change earthly treasures into heavenly treasures, or 
make friends for eternity out of the mammon of 
unrighteousness, which means money, and all sorts 
of earthly treasures. 

There is one very curious thing about crystals that 
I have not mentioned yet. They are sometimes 
changed into something quite different from what 
they were at first. Here is a crystal of chlorite that 
was once garnet. Some chemical change took place 
and it became a different mineral, though keeping 
the form of a garnet. Here is a crystal of quartz 
which has the shape of a lime crystal. It was lime, 
or calcite, once, but was changed into quartz, which 
is more durable. 

Mineralogists call these crystals pseudomorphs. 

I have seen in Colorado trees of petrified wood. 

They were once wood, soft, perishable, woody fiber. 

But in some way they were changed into beautiful 

(145) 



146 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

quartz, which is so enduring : and some of them were 
filled with streaks of agate, and carnelian, and opal ; 
and in some of the hollow spaces are beautiful clus- 
ters of rock crystal and amethyst. 

How nice it would be if you could take up a com- 
mon pebble and change it into a beautiful diamond 
or ruby ! How nice it would be if you could take 
a piece of iron or lead and change it into silver or 
gold ! A long time ago people thought they could 
do that ; or they thought it could be done with a cer- 
tain stone, the philosopher's stone, if they could only 
find it. And they spent a good deal of thought and 
time and hard work and midnight oil and money, 
in trying to find that philosopher's stone. They 
never found it and they never will among the stones 
of this earth. 

But there is a way by which we may change gold, 
and silver, and copper, and bank bills, and precious 
stones, yea, and all the passing duties and opportu- 
nities of each day, into heavenly treasures that will 
never perish or pass away, into friends that will 
welcome us into heaven, and receive us into ever- 
lasting habitations. How can we do it, do you ask ? 
Simply by taking all these things and doing good 
with them. In that way we take the perishing part, 
the worldly, selfish part, out of them, and we add 
to them that charity, or love, which, the Bible says, 
abides forever. 



CHANGED CRYSTALS. 147 

Princess Eugenie is sister of the King of Den- 
mark. She inherited a great fortune from her grand- 
parents, but instead of using it for personal display 
and luxuries, she chose the better way and used it 
in doing good. She was an earnest Christian, and 
gave a great deal of money for hospitals and asy 
lums and schools and missionaries. 

Once she built a hospital for the sick, and she 
found that she had not enough ready money to 
finish and furnish the building. So she sold her 
jewels and put the money they brought into that 
hospital. One day she visited the hospital and went 
from room to room, and from cot to cot, to see the 
poor sick people. As she came near the bedside of 
one poor sick man, the tears of gratitude rolled down 
his cheeks. The princess was so affected by it that 
she exclaimed: "Ah! now I see my diamonds 
again !" and her plain homely features kindled with 
joy. In the sight of those poor sick people, and in 
the sight of the angels, she was a very beautiful 
princess. 

What wonderful changes her diamonds passed 
through ! They were changed to money, and then 
to brick and mortar, and then to tears of gratitude, 
and then to friends that should welcome her into 
heaven, and to treasures that moth and rust cannot 
corrupt, and that no thief can steal. 

Suppose you give some money to send Christ's 



148 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

gospel to the heathen, and yon follow the gift with 
your prayers, and God so directs and uses that gift 
that a soul is converted. You do not know any- 
thing about that soul until you reach heaven. Then 
Christ introduces you to each other, and says to you : 
" Here is that money you gave, and this soul wel- 
comes you to heaven, and shall be your friend for- 
ever." Then you would understand what is meant 
by making friends of the mammon of unrighteous- 
ness. 

And in the same way you can turn into heavenly 
treasures and heavenly friends all the common duties, 
and privileges, and opportunities, of this life, by 
using them all for Christ and your fellowmen, and 
doing everything in a Christ-like spirit. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

CHANGED INTO CHEIST'S EUAGE.— A CHEISTMAS SERMON, 

"But we * * * are changed into the same image." — 1 Cor, 
iii : 18. 

Our lesson last week from the crystal was based 
on what are called pseudomorphs, or changed crys- 
tals. I showed you then how we can change earthly 
treasures into heavenly treasures, or how we can 
make friends out of the mammon of unrighteous- 
ness. 

To-day I bring you another lesson from the same 
thing, so that our thirty-sixth lesson from the crystal 
is a second lesson from the changed crystals. The 
lesson is that we may be changed into Christ's im- 
age. 

It is a glorious thing that we can change earthly 
treasures into heavenly treasures. It is more glori- 
ous that God is willing to change us into the image 
of his Son. 

One of the ways in which crystals are changed is 

this : One of the things found in them is dropped 

or dissolved out, and something else is taken up in 

its place. For example this crystal of kaolin was 

(149) 



150 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

once feldspar. The feldspar dropped its potash- 
silicate and in its place took up water, and then it 
was kaolin, out of which beautiful china dishes are 
made. 

Sometimes that part of the crystal not changed is 
purified by fire, just as the granite was once mud and 
dirt and animal remains, deposited at the bottom of 
rivers and seas, but the fire changed it, burning out 
all its impurities and leaving it a crystalline rock. 

Now it is in some such way that we are changed 
into Christ's image. In the first place something 
must be separated from us. Self, selfishness, sin, — 
these must be put away ; they must be dissolved 
of us. Then those things that remain in us must be 
purified by the fire of the Holy Spirit. The dross 
must be burned out of our thoughts, and feelings, 
and affections, and desires. They must all become 
crystalline. 

Then, in the third place, something must be added 
to take the place of what was put away. And what 
shall it be ? The love of Christ. Yes, Christ him- 
self. He comes to take the place of self and sin. 
He abides in our hearts and becomes a part of us, 
and we should say to him : "None of self and all 
of Thee." 

Sometimes I find a crystal that is in process of be- 
ing changed. It has lost part of its- old self and 
has taken up part of something else. It is neither 



CHANGED INTO CHRIST'S IMAGE . 151 

one nor the other, and that is your condition if you 
are saying to Christ : " Some of self and some of 
Thee," or even if you are saying: " Less of self 
and more of Thee." Do you want Christ, when he 
conies, to find you in that condition ? 

Sometimes I find a crystal in which the change is 
only skin deep. Only the surface of the crystal is 
changed, while on the inside the old stuff remains. 
Those crystals are hypocrites, are they not % 

Then sometimes I find a crystal that is almost 
completely changed, but down in the center, in the 
core or heart, there is still left a little of the old 
crystal, a little of the old nature. Is that like any 
of you who are trying to be Christians ? Is there 
left down in your hearts a little of self ? If there is 
you would better put it away, that you may be fully 
changed into the image of Christ. 

God desires that we should be conformed to the 
image of his Son ; but in order that we might be 
thus changed, Christ was first made in our image. 
He laid aside his heavenly glory, and took upon him 
this form of a servant. On Christmas day, long 
ago, he was born into the world as a helpless babe, 
just as you once were. And he was once just as old 
and just as large as each one of you, with eyes as 
bright and heart as light as yours. He was a per- 
fect child. He took your image, and then died, that 
he might help change you into his image, from glory 



152 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

to glory. And when you are changed you will be 
a new creature in Christ. Old things will pass 
away and all things will become new. This is the 
new birth. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 



HALOS OF GLORY. 



" There was a rainbow round about the throne." — Revelation 
iv:3. 

I suppose most of you saw the beautiful halos and 
circles that made the sky so glorious on a recent Fri- 
day afternoon and evening. Those who were look- 
ing up saw them, and they told others, and multi- 
tudes saw them because others told them to look. 
The telephones were working busily all over the city, 
as men sent word to their families, and friends to 
friends, to look into the heavens. 

I walked quite a distance that afternoon along the 
street without seeing the display, because I was look- 
ing down rather than up. But a friend who knew 
that I was glad to see such things, called at my 
house and told me of it. Then I passed the word 
along by telling my family, and by shouting to some 
one across the street who had not noticed it, and by 
going to the Central school and telling some of the 
teachers so that the scholars could see the wonderful 
display. 

And I enjoyed it all the more, because I was able 
(153) 



154 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

to tell others of it, and get thern to enjoy it. How 
selfish it would have been for that friend who told 
me, or for me, to have said, "I won't tell any one 
of this wonderful sight. I will enjoy it all by my- 
self, and then I can say, ' I have seen something 
that you haven't. ' " 

Now here at the outset are two lessons for us. 
One is that if we cultivate the habit of looking 
down instead of up, we shall miss some very beauti- 
ful and glorious things, not only in the natural sky 
above us, but in the spiritual heavens, which are all 
the time declaring and showing the glory of God 
through the glorious things of God. 

Another lesson is, that when we hear good news 
we ought to tell others of it ; and when we see any- 
thing that gives us pleasure we should tell others so 
that they may share it with us. And if we do this 
we will enjoy it, not less, but more, than if we kept 
it to ourselves. 

If we are charmed with the beauty that is in 
Christ we shall enjoy it ail the more if we can per- 
suade others to turn their eyes towards Him who 
is chief est among ten thousand and altogether lovely. 

Taking the afternoon and evening together, the 
recent display of halos was the finest I ever saw. 
There was a great white circle extending from the 
sun clear around the heavens parallel to the horizon. 
Then it was cut by another circle with the sun in its 



EALOS OF GLORY. 155 

center, and at the two points where the smaller circle 
crossed the larger one there were very bright mock 
suns, while up near the zenith was a very beautiful 
and brilliant colored half-circle. The display in the 
evening under the full moon was about the same, 
with some variations. 

When I looked at those halos one of the first 
things I thought of was this : The crystals are 
making this display, or rather the crystals and the 
light together. The air was very still and very cold, 
and full of very small, six-sided frost crystals, in- 
visible to us. As they rested in the air I suppose 
they all lay in just about the same position, and the 
light of the sun, as it fell on them, was reflected 
from and refracted by those tiny crystals so as to 
produce the circles and halos. 

And when I saw that the crystal had something to 
do with it, I said to myself : " What lesson can we 
learn from it to add to our crystal series ?" And 
this was the thought that the halos suggested : The 
text says that around the throne on which sit God 
and the Lamb, there is a rainbow. In the pictures 
that men make of Christ you will often see a halo 
of golden glory around his head. And when we see 
Christ as he is in glory I think there will be some- 
thing corresponding to that, which will cause him to 
appear very glorious to us. And cannot we, like 
clear crystals, reflect the light of the Sun of Eight- 



156 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

eousness so as to add to the beauty of the halos of 
glory that surround our Lord i One of us could not 
do much alone. In the great universe we would be 
as invisible as the frost crystal, and as insignificant 
apparently. But if each one is in his right place, 
and reflects the true light from a soul and a life clear 
as crystal, then with what halos of glory the great 
multitude of the redeemed can crown Jesus Lord of 
all through eternal ages ! 

And then, too, if we fill the atmosphere of our 
lives with love, with loving thoughts and feelings, 
with love crystalized into words and deeds, and let 
Christ shine upon and through it all, will not our 
fellowmen see halos of heavenly light around our 
heads \ They will see them not merely after we 
are dead, as the}' once painted the pictures of glo- 
rified saints and martyrs, but while we are yet alive 
and walk anions: them. 



CHAPTER XXXVIH. 



PATIEXT WAITING. 



" I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined unto me, and 
heard my cry." — Psalm, xl : 1. 

Our next lesson from the crystal is not so much 
a lesson from the crystal, as from one or two of my 
experiences in hunting for crystals. 

In the summer of 1879, needing a week of quiet 
and perfect rest, I went to Monument Park and 
boarded at a quiet farm house. During the day I 
spent hours in roaming over the rocks and hills. I 
had heard of some fine crystals of smoky quartz 
being found in that region, and I was very anxious 
to find some for myself. So for hours and days I 
wandered over those great beds of pebbles, and 
searched sharply, and eagerly, and prayerfully, too, 
for those crystals. Bat I found not one crystal, nor 
the sign of one. Of course I was disappointed. 

The next year I camped for a week in Crystal 
Park, a beautiful park in the mountains south of 
Manitou. One evening after a heavy rain I started 
up the mountain side for a walk, not expecting to 
look for crystals. I crossed a deep, lonely valley, 
(157) 



158 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

and while climbing the steep hill on the other side 
I found a crystal in the gravel. I knew it must have 
tumbled down hill, so I climbed up further and 
found the nest from which it came. It was under 
the roots of a pine tree, and there I found a peck or 
half bushel of fine crystals and clusters of crystals. 

In Monument Park days of searching brought me 
nothing. In Crystal Park I found an abundance 
almost without airy effort. After a year's patient 
waiting my desire was abundantly gratified. 

Peter, James, and John were partners in the fish- 
ing business on the Sea of Galilee. One night they 
went fishing in their boat. The}' toiled hard all 
night long and did not catch a single fish. Doubt- 
less they were disappointed and discouraged. The 
next day Jesus came along, and got into that same 
boat, and asked Peter to push out a little way into 
the water. Then he sat there and taught the people 
who were on the land. When he was through speak- 
ing he asked Peter to push out a little farther and 
let down his net. 

Peter said they would do it if Christ said so, al- 
though the}' had been trying it all night without any 
success. So they let down the net again, and it was 
hardly under water before it was full of fish, a great 
multitude of them. 

Then Christ told them that henceforth they should 
catch men. And when in after years they some- 



PATIENT WAITING. 159 

times toiled a long time without any converts I pre- 
sume they remembered their experience on Galilee, 
and sought more earnestly to have Christ in the boat 
with them, and to have him direct where to cast the 
net. 

Sometimes missionaries have gone to foreign lands 
amoDg the heathen, and they have toiled and prayed 
and wept for years without seeing one single soul 
converted to Christ. But they toiled on, and waited 
patiently for the Lord, and finally their hearts were 
made glad with a great draught of fishes, with mul- 
titudes of souls gathered into the gospel net. 

In one part of India the missionaries toiled for 
years and there seemed no encouragement. They 
were advised to give up the mission. But they said, 
" No ; we will cast the net again."' They did so and 
thousands upon thousands of souls were saved. 

God knows not only what it is best for us to have, 
but when it is best for us to have it ; and what he 
refuses us to-day when we earnestly plead for it, he 
may give us to-morrow without our asking for it. 

If my little boy should plead earnestly for a sharp 
jack-knife and a pair of skates I should refuse to 
give them to him now. But I would remember his 
desire, and when he was older perhaps he would 
wake up some morning and find that they were his. 

Is there something that you want very much in- 
deed '{ Have you taken it to the Lord in prayer, 



160 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

and have you failed thus far to get it ? Be patient ; 
wait patiently for the Lord ; he has inclined his ear ; 
he hears your ery. Your prayer, if it was a sincere 
one, is treasured in one of the golden vials that are 
full of odors, the prayers of saints, and when the 
right time comes you will get the desire of your 
heart, either what you asked for, or something better. 

THE THINGS SO DEAR. 

" I cannot think but God must know 
About the things I long for so ; 
I know he is so good, so kind, 
I cannot think but he will find 
Some way to help, some way to show 
Me to the things I long for so. 

" I stretch my hand — they lie so near, 
They look so sweet ; they look so dear, 
' Dear Lord,' I pray, ' Oh, let me know 
If it is wrong to want them so ! ' 
He only smiles — he does not speak ; 
My heart grows weaker, and more weak, 
With looking at the things so dear, 
Which lie so far, and yet so near. 

"Now, Lord, I leave at thy loved feet 

Those things which look so near, so sweet, 

I will not seek, I will not long — 

I almost fear I have been wrong — 

I'll go and work the harder, Lord, 

And wait till by some loud, clear word 

Thou callest me to thy loved feet, 

To take those things so dear, so sweet." 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

A WHITE STONE AND A NEW NAME. 

" To Mm that overcometh will I give * * * a white stone, 
and upon the stone a new name written." — Revelation ii: 17. 

These clear quartz crystals are sometimes called 
white stones, not because they are white, but because 
they are colorless and reflect the white light. So the 
stone referred to in the text may have been a clear 
quartz crystal. The word at any rate came to mean 
a polished stone, upon which it was customary in 
ancient times to engrave words and pictures. 

White and black stones were once used in voting. 
If a person was running for office a white stone 
would be put into the box by those who voted for 
him, and a black stone by those who wanted to vote 
against him. If a person was being tried for a crime 
a white stone, or pebble, cast for him meant ' not 
guilty ; ' a black stone meant ' guilty. ' 

Some of the ancients kept a large jar and put into 
it a white pebble at the close of every day which 
they thought had been a happy day, and a black 
pebble when the day had been an unhappy one. 
When the person died his friends would count the 
(161) 



162 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

pebbles to see which kind had the largest number, 
and that decided whether he had lived a happy life 
or not. 

Among the Greeks a white stone was the sign of 
good fortune and prosperity. If a person had great 
virtues he was said to have received a white stone 
from the gods. 

So you see when Christ promises to give us a 
white stone he means a great deal by it. It means 
that he casts a vote to make us kings and priests ; 
it means that he votes to acquit us of our sins ; and 
it means that our life forever shall be happy and 
prosperous. 

But the stone which he gives us is to have a new 
name written on it, which no one will know or un- 
derstand, excepting him that receives it. I know a 
lady who wears a plain gold ring that was given her 
by her husband after the}' became engaged. As you 
glance at it carelessly you do not notice any word 
or name on it, but on the inside are engraved, in 
fine letters, their initials, the date of their engage- 
ment, and this beautiful motto: "Each for the 
other and both for God. " Do you suppose that lady 
would part with that ring? 

What do you suppose will be written on the white 
stone that Christ gives us when we overcome ? I do 
not know ; no one knows or will know except the 
one who receives it. I shall understand what is on 



A WRITE STONE AND A XEW NAME. 163 

mine, but you will not ; and you will understand 
what is on yours, but I will not. We shall each have 
a secret between us and the Lord. 

A woman was sick with small-pox, and of course 
could not see her children. Her little boy tried to 
write her a letter. He had not learned to write, but 
he took a sheet of paper and scribbled it all over 
with marks, and sent it as his letter. Nobody could 
read that letter except the mother. She knew what 
it meant. She understood it to say: "Dear mamma, 
I am sony you are sick, and I hope God will make 
you well. I am lonesome without you and want to 
see you ever so much, for I love you more than 
tongue can tell." 

So we shall understand, if no one else does, what 
Christ writes on our white stone. Christ is Prophet, 
Priest, and King, and he has a great many other 
names that are given to him in the Bible, showing 
his different offices, and the different relations he 
sustains to his people. He is more of some things 
to one person than he is to others. Every person 
has his own besetting sins, and his peculiar trials and 
temptations, so that what Christ does for one person 
is a little different from what he does for anybody 
else. 

Xow perhaps he will give himself a new name, or 
title, which will show just what he has been to us, 
and what he has done for us. We shall understand 



164 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

it perfectty, and of course Christ will, but no one 
else will, because no one else will know as we do 
just what Christ has done for us. 

Remember that Christ does not promise this white 
stone with a new name on it to everybody. It is 
only to those who overcome temptation and trials 
and sin, and endure faithful unto the end. It re- 
mains to be seen whether you and I get one or not, 
but let us try hard for it. 

f< * * * ^ pure white stone, 

And in the stone, a secret name, 
A strange new name, and no two stones 

Shall bear inscription quite the same. 

This is the thought that thrills me through : 

We have a secret — God and I ! 
He keeps it now, but unto me 

He will reveal it by and by. 
And while 1 wait, my heart still holds 

Some fancy, beautiful and fair, 
Of what that glad surprise will be, 

When he his thought with me shall share. 

Perhaps some precious name by which 

He knows me in his heart of love, 
Because of special service given, 

Or special grace I've learned to prove ; 
As wrestling Jacob, after prayer, 

Had seal of victory on him set, 
In that new name which crowned his seed, 

And clings to all God's people yet. 



A WRITE STONE AND A NEW NAME. 165 

Or it may be, the precious stone, 

Like rich intaglio given to each, 
Of Christ shall some impression hold, 

Expressing more than any speech : 
How in some great emergent hour, 

When heart and flesh were failing fast, 
He showed us such or such a face, 

Till all the fear was overpast. 

Or once in some communion's hour 

We went with him up Tabor's steep, 
And that transfigured face for us 

Forevermore the stone will keep. 
And thus I muse : I know not what 

The secret is — yet still the same, 
His thought of me, or mine of him, 

Will sweeter be in that new name." 

— Mrs. Herrick Johnson. 



CHAPTER XL. 

DILIGENT SEARCHING FOR CRYSTALS. 

" Search the Scriptures * * * they are they which testify oj 

me."— John v: 39. 
" They searched the Scriptures daily." — Acts xvii : 11. 

There are two ways of looking for crystals. One 
is to pass along carelessly over the ground and pick 
them up if you happen to see them, or if you hit 
your foot against them. The other way is to keep 
both eyes open and look sharply and diligently all 
over the ground, looking closely to see that no crys- 
tals escape you. I need not say that those who look 
in this last way are the ones who are most successful. 
I once found some gems worth several dollars in 
some gravel that another person had looked over two 
or three times, but I had to look very sharply. 

There are also two ways, at least, of looking at 
crystals. One person will glance hastily over a 
whole collection and say : " Well, those are pretty 
stones. Where did you get them, and what are 
they good for, anyway ? Another person will take 
one crystal and look at it a long time, and the longer 
he looks the more he sees. That is the way in 
which we have been looking at the clear crystal. 
(166) 



DILIGENT SEARCHING FOR CRYSTALS. 167 

When I began this series of sermons on the crys- 
tal I had only ten lessons in mind that I thought the 
crystal would teach us. Then a few more occurred 
to me and I had fifteen. Then, as I diligently 
searched the crystal, it revealed to me some more of 
its secrets, until I had twenty. At that time I 
I thought surely that the twenty-second or twenty- 
third w r ould end the series. But the crystal had 
more secrets in its liquid depths, and one by one I 
caught sight of them, and now this is the fortieth 
sermon on the crystal that I have given you since I 
began the series one year ago this morning. I 
hardly dare promise an end to the series short of the 
fiftieth, and perhaps not then, for it has been true 
lately that every time I have put one lesson in shape 
another one would occur to me. We have found 
more "sermons in the stones" than Shakespeare ever 
dreamed of , because we have looked at them carefully. 

I have heard of a book which some one wrote 
about the bee, in which the author draws a great 
number of practical lessons from that little insect, 
the result of careful study. 

When Agassiz received a new student of natural 
history he would give him a fish and tell him to cut 
it to pieces and study it, and carefully notice every 
fact that he observed. And he would require the 
student to spend days, perhaps weeks, on the study 
of that one fish. 



168 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

Sir Isaac Newton, who found out so many of na- 
ture's wonderful secrets, said that when he began to 
study a hard subject it would all appear a dark 
blank, but after looking at it long and patiently a 
little speck of light would appear, and as he kept 
steadily gazing at it, it grew larger and brighter, un- 
til finally the whole subject was full of light. 

Now these facts show how we are to search God's 
word in order to find out all we can about Christ. 
Some men have studied the Bible for fifty or sixty 
years and have not grown tired of it, nor ceased to 
find new truths and lessons in it. Yet some people 
wonder why anybody wants to read the Bible through 
more than once. I think if you received a love letter 
from the one dearest to you, you would read it more 
than once. The Bible is God's letter of love to this 
wond, and it will bear a great many readings by 
those who love God. 

The Jews used to think that whole worlds of mean- 
ing hung on every corner of every letter in the Old 
Testament. That was putting it too strongly, but it is 
true that there are worlds of truth in God's word. A 
minister once preached every night for a week from 
the text : l ' For God so loved the world, that he gave 
his only begotten Son, that whosover believeth in 
him should not perish, but have everlasting life," 
but at the end of the week he gave it up and said 
that he could not begin to exhaust the meaning of 
that verse. 



DILIGENT SE ACHING FOR CRYSTALS. 169 

I hope that none of you will ever feel too old to 
search the Scriptures, or too old to be in the Sunday 
school. 

Some people, and even some Christian people, read 
about Christ in the Bible, and the only idea they get 
about him is the one expressed in his earthly name 
of Jesus, a Savior ; and they get only half of that 
idea. They see that he saves us from the punish- 
ment of sin, but they fail to grasp the truth that he 
saves us from sin itself. 

If you look steadily at Christ and get well ac- 
quainted with him, and search the Scriptures to find 
out all you can about him, one glorious thing after 
another about Christ will come to you. You will 
find that each one of the one hundred and twenty, 
or more, different names and titles given to Christ 
in the Bible has a deep meaning. 

You will find by searching, that Christ is not only 
your Savior, but also your Prophet, and Priest, and 
King, and Door, and Way, and Truth, and Life, 
and Eesurrection, and Advocate, and Shepherd, and 
Witness, and Friend, and Sanctifier, and Leader, 
and Eock, and Rose of Sharon, and Wisdom, and a 
host of other things. 

Search the Scriptures then that you may see more 
and more of the beauty and glory of Christ, and re- 
member that however much you may see in this life, 
you will see vastly more in heaven. For every star 



170 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

that you see in the sky with the naked eye, there are 
six or eight thousand other stars that you can see 
with the telescope. For every beauty that you can 
see in Christ now, there will be a host of other 
beautiful things that your eye will detect when you 
see him as he is in heaven, and gaze upon him 
through eternal ages. 



CHAPTEE XLI. 

CRYSTAL DREAMS. 

" Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the 
heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them 
that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his 
Spirit." — 1 Corinthians ii : 9, 10. 

In digging crystals I have often had a curious ex- 
perience which probably some of you have had in 
respect to other things. After digging crystals all 
day I would lie down and go to sleep and dig crys- 
tals all night in my dreams. And those that I found 
in my dreams were always larger and finer in every 
way than those that I had actually found. 

A few years ago I spent a whole afternoon in 
digging brilliant, diamond-like quartz crystals in 
New York State. I found some nice ones, but 
when with weary limbs I lay down on the bed that 
night and went to sleep, oh ! what brilliant and 
magnificent crystals kept rolling out of the dirt be- 
fore my eyes. 

Last year I spent a day in breaking beautiful rose- 
red rhodocrosite crystals out of the rocks on the 
dump of a mine in the mountains near Leadville. 
(171) 



172 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

Then I rode all night on the cars, and as I half dozed 
and half slept, great rich clusters of those rose-red 
crystals kept dancing before my eyes, far nicer ones 
than any I had found that day. 

Whenever I have such dreams I think how nice it 
would be if I could only catch those airy shadows 
of crystals, and turn them into real crystals, and 
keep them. And then I think that probably some- 
where in the ground there are real crystals that are 
just as beautiful as any whose visions move across 
my brain in sleep, and that some one will perhaps 
find them sometime. Perhaps I will. In fact I 
think I have in some cases had those dreams come 
true. At any rate I expect to see in the walls of the 
New Jerusalem twelve manners of gems that in size, 
and purity, and brilliancy, will far exceed any gems 
worn by earthly monarchs, or described in Arabian 
tales. 

I presume all of 3^011 have had what are called day- 
dreams. You have built castles in the air. You 
have imagined that you found a very rich gold or 
silver mine, and became a millionaire. And you 
have thought what you would do, the things you 
would buy, the beautiful mansion you would build, 
the journeys you would take, the gifts you would 
make to friends, and to the poor, the colleges and 
hospitals you would endow. And as you build the 
air-castle you almost forget your poverty and your 



CRYSTAL BREAMS. 173 

troubles ; you enjoy the day-dream ; you indulge in 
what are called the pleasures of imagination. 

And then you wake up and the dream fades ; the 
beautiful air-castle tumbles to the ground and van- 
ishes from sight, and you sadly say, ' ' Oh ! those fine 
things are not for me." 

But hold on a moment. They are for you, or 
something just as good, on one condition, and that 
is that you love God. We are told that no eye has 
seen, and no ear heard, and no heart conceived, the 
beautiful and glorious things that God has prepared 
for them that love him. The only way in which we 
can get an idea of it is by a sort of heavenly vision 
or dream, in which God reveals it to us by his spirit. 

Paul had such a vision once when he was caught 
up into Paradise and heard unspeakable words that 
he could not utter. John had such a vision when he 
was in the Isle of Patmos in the Spirit on the Lord's 
day. And we sometimes get little glimpses of the 
glories of heaven, such as fill us with unspeakable joy. 

" Whatsoever things thou canst desire " are not to 
be compared with what God is preparing for his 
children. 

The sinner's hope will perish. His dreams of 
coming happiness will vanish like the clouds. But 
all the bright dreams of bliss that the Christian has 
will be more than realized. If he does not get just 
what he dreams of, he will get something better. 



174 (JLEAU AS CRYSTAL. 

** I have read of a beautiful city- 
Far away in the kingdom of God ; 

I have read how its walls are of jasper, 
How its streets are all golden and broad. 

In the midst of the street is life's river, 
Clear as crystal and pure to behold, 

But not half of that city's bright glory 
To mortals has ever been told. ' ' 



CHAPTER XLn. 

GETTING THE BEST CEYSTALS. 
" Covet earnestly the best gifts." — 1 Corinthians xii : 31. 

Among persons who collect minerals there is often 
a good deal of friendly rivalry as to who shall have 
the best or largest crystals. I had a large garnet 
that weighed four pounds. But a friend of mine 
succeeded in getting one that weighed six. Then, 
of course, I wanted a larger one, and after awhile 
I had the opportunity to buy one that weighed four- 
teen pounds, and I promptly bought it. It has value, 
not only because it is large and very regular, but 
also because it is the best one that has yet been found 
in Colorado. A collector in the East is very anxious 
to get it so that he can have the largest and best. 

I also had, until recently, the largest precious to- 
paz yet found in Colorado, one that weighed twenty 
ounces. The eastern collector heard of it and kept 
writing for it until finally I sent it to him. He cov- 
eted the best and was willing to pay for it. 

Sometimes mineral collectors have seen in a col- 
lection one specimen that they wanted, and because 
they could not get it separately they have paid a very 
(175) " 



176 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

high price for the whole collection in order to get 
that one specimen. 

Kings and queens generally have a great deal of 
money. Some of them receive as much in one day 
as the President of the United States receives in a 
whole year. And they are always on the lookout 
for the finest gems that can be found in the world. 
They are willing to pay vast sums of money for an 
unusually large diamond or ruby or sapphire. 

Of course only one person can own the largest 
crystal, or the finest gem, in the world. But the 
Bible tells us about certain things that are more 
precious than rubies, better than fine gold, and worth 
more than all the precious stones in all the world. 
If you can get them they will shine more brightly 
on your soul than the most brilliant diamonds would 
on your body ; and these are things that every one 
can get. 

There are some things that the Bible commands 
us not to covet, those things which others will be de- 
prived of if we get them. But there are other 
things which the Bible tells us to covet, and covet 
earnestly. They are things which, if we get them, 
no one else will lose. They are gifts from God, and 
they are God's best gifts. 

If I should give away my best crystal I could give 
it to only one of you. But when God gives away 
his best things he gives them to everybody who de- 



GETTING THE BEST CRYSTALS. Ill 

sires or covets them, and who will take the trouble 
to ask for them, and do what needs to be done in 
order to get them. 

Suppose you had an old cobble stone that was 
worthless, and also a crystal of poisonous arsenic, 
and I should tell you that if you would throw them 
away and call at my house I would give you two 
very beautiful gems. Would you do it ? You would 
be very foolish if you did not. God asks us to 
throw away our useless and evil things, and call on 
him and he will give us, not only good things, but 
the best things. 

Do you want to know what some of those best 
things are ? Repentance is the gift of God, and so 
is forgiveness, and peace, and joy, and patience, and 
faith, and meekness, and gentleness, and a forgiving 
spirit. How beautiful and beyond all price these 
things are ! Rubies, and sapphires, and diamonds, 
and fine gold are as rubbish compared with them. 

I remember the first time I heard John B. Gough 
speak. I had never heard such eloquence, and I 
said to myself, "OI wish that I had that wonderful 
power of moving the hearts and wills of men." I 
coveted that gift of oratory, and resolved that I 
would get it if I could. So when I see any Chris- 
tian grace manifested in any of you I say to myself, 
" I want that grace, and with God's help I will have 
it." 



178 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

O ! let us all try to get the very best that there is 
in the Christian life, not for the sake of excelling 
others, but in order to help others. And then we 
will not lament, but rejoice, if others get something 
better. 



CHAPTER XLIIL 

A SOFT ANSWER. 

" A soft answer turneth away wrath." — Proverbs xv: 1. 

I will illustrate this text by a little experience 
that I had once in hunting for crystals many years 
ago. I had gone more than twenty-five miles to 
visit a locality that I had visited two or three times 
before, and which I had brought to the attention of 
other collectors, so that it had become quite a noted 
locality. It was in a wild place and at quite a dis- 
tance from any house. I dug for crystals until dark 
and then went to the house of an acquaintance nearly 
a mile away and stayed all night, and at daylight 
went out again and dug until breakfast time. 

After breakfast my friend said that the owner of 
the land where the crystals were found was coming 
after me with fire in his eye. He said moreover 
that he was a passionate man, and that it would be 
of no use for him to say anything to him. "All 
right," I said, " I'll manage him." 

He drove up and began in an excited and angry 
tone: " Are you the man that was digging crystals 
over there this morning ? " 

" (179) 



180 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

" Yes,'* I said, "I suppose I am the one.*' 

" Well, that lot belongs to me and all the minerals 
on it are mine, and I don't let any one go there un- 
less they pay me five dollars a day. " 

" Is that so?" I said. "I am sorry I did not 
know it or I would certainly have asked your per- 
mission. I have been after minerals a great many 
times, and I was never yet charged for carrying the 
stones off from a man's field." 

"Well, I can't help it. Those stones are mine, 
and you'll have to pay me five dollars a day. Mr. 
N. pays me that much, and ten dollars when he has 
a man to help him, and he has paid me in all over 
forty dollars." 

" Has he \ " said I, " Well now look here, do you 
know that you would not have got that money if it 
had not been for me. He learned of this locality by 
some crystals that I found here years ago. So you 
see you are indebted to me for that money. And 
you know Mr. N. digs the crystals to sell. I get 
them for my private collection and for a few friends 
and I cannot afford to pay for them." 

Then he moderated his tone a good deal, and came 
down about one half in his demands. Then I hap- 
pened to ask him if he knew my father, who had 
often preached in that town. 

"Why, yes; are you a son of Father C? I 
knoAv him well. He has been to my house, and I 
have often heard him preach.' 1 



A SOFT ANSWER. 1-81 

By this time his wrath was gone, and he came 
down about one half more in his demands. I pre- 
sume if I had talked softly to him a little longer he 
would not have charged me anything. But I paid 
him something, and satisfied him that I had trans- 
gressed through ignorance, and he went away in a 
very different frame of mind from the one in which 
he came. The simple fact was that my soft answers 
had turned away his wrath. He threw stones at me 
and I threw back flowers, and the flowers proved to 
be the stronger. The stones and flowers were not 
simply in what was said, but in the tones that were 
used. 

If you take a hard stone and strike an edge of soft 
metal, the stone will turn the edge of the metal. 
But if you bring hard speech and soft answers to- 
gether it is just the other way. The soft, gentle 
answer turns the edge of the hard speech ; in fact it 
takes all the hardness out of it. 

Did you ever try this experiment to see whether 
the text is true ? Suppose you try it every time you 
have a chance. If any one speaks crossly and harshly 
to you, answer them gently and with a smile. If 
you are at all to blame, either through wilfulness, or 
through ignorance, as I was, acknowledge it frankly 
and apologize cordially. There would not be many 
quarrels in this world if one of the parties would 
only give soft answers. 



182 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

Did you see that runaway the other day ? You 
didn't? Well, that is strange. You must have 
heard it then, for it was your own tongue, that un- 
ruly, untamed horse, that ran away with you. And 
I think it did considerable damage before it stopped. 
And I wonder if it was not the gentle Avords, the soft 
answers of your mother, or teacher, or friend, that 
it ran against and stopped! 

The other day when the snow was falling I noticed 
that in some places the ground had been so warmed 
by the sun that it melted the flakes of snow as soon 
as they fell. In other places the ground was cold 
and on it the snow remained unmelted. Let us keep 
our hearts so warm with the love of Christ that when 
harsh and angry words from others fall upon them 
they shall melt at once, and their wrath be driven 
away. "A soft answer turneth away wrath, but 
grievous words stir up strife." 



CHAPTER XLIY. 

CRYSTAL GEODES AND PEBBLES. 

"Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have 
entertained angels unawares." — Hebrews xiii : 2. 

In certain states, especially in Iowa and Illinois, 
are found large numbers of round stones of different 
sizes that appear very rough on the outside, but 
when you break them open you find that they are 
hollow, and that the inside is lined with clear, bright, 
sparkling crystals. They are called geodes. They 
are homely on the outside but beautiful on the in- 
side. When we pick up such stones we need to be 
very careful how we throw them away, for there is 
no telling what crystal beauties are on the inside. 

I picked up once in the dirt a little black-looking 
crystal that seemed to be of no account, but when I 
had cleaned it, it proved to be a very beautiful wine- 
colored crystal of precious topaz, and then I was 
glad that I had not thrown it away. 

Out of the dirt and gravel of a little stream near 
Pike's Peak some one picked up a rough water-worn 
pebble and sold it for a dollar. The person who 
bought it sold it again for six or seven dollars. The 
third owner had it cut and polished and then it was 
(183) 



184 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

pronounced a sapphire and valued at fifteen hundred 
dollars. The first owners did not know what an 
angel gem they were parting with when they let it 
go. I think there are more such pebbles to be 
picked up from Colorado gravel beds. Pebbles are 
not to be despised when there is a possibility of 
finding such gems among them. 

Millions of dollars worth of diamonds have been 
taken from the diamond fields of South Africa. 
The first ones were picked up by some Dutch Boers, 
whose children used them as playthings, not know- 
ing their value. A stranger happened along and 
thought they might be worth something. They were 
taken to a distant town and sold for a large sum of 
money. I have some "diamond dirt," a stiff clay, 
from South Africa, in which the diamonds are found. 
If I should break it open I might find a valuable 
diamond in it, so I do not throw it away, although it 
seems to be nothing but a piece of hard clay. 

You have all heard how Michael Angelo, the great 
sculptor, once stopped suddenly before a rough piece 
of marble and exclaimed, "I see an angel in that 
marble and I must let it out." He went to work 
with his chisel and ere long he had carved out of that 
rough block the form of a beautiful angel. 

When three travel-worn strangers stopped at the 
door of Abraham's tent one day, he did not know 
who they were. He only knew that they were tired 



CRYSTAL QEODES AND PEBBLES. 185 

and hungry travelers, and so he entertained them. 
He brought water for their feet, and he and Sarah 
prepared a good dinner for them. Two of them 
were angels, aud the other one was the Lord. He 
had entertained angels unawares, and the Lord, too. 

Some people may appear very rough and un- 
polished on the outside, but in the heart there is a 
crystalline purity that needs only the light to reveal 
its beauty. 

Some very rough and wicked people still have that 
in them, which, in the hands of Christ, can be turned 
into a glorious gem. He is an angel spirit now with 
many stars in his crown, though a drunken sot then, 
whom those good men entertained when they were 
kind to John B. Gough. 

A certain school-master always used to take off his 
hat to his scholars, for he said he did not know what 
great men of the future were among them. When- 
ever we meet any human being, however degraded 
or humble, it is well to remember that that person 
may yet be a bright and glorious angel. 

When Christ was on earth he stopped in many 
different homes to eat and sleep. Not all who en- 
tertained him knew that he was the King of Glory. 
To them it was given to entertain unawares the King. 
They do not regret their hospitality now. 

If Christ were going through this city seeking a 
lodging or a meal, would you be glad to entertain him? 



186 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

He is in this city all the time, and you can entertain 
him, for he has said of the poor, the rich, the needy, 
the prisoner, " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one 
of the least of these, ye have done it unto me. " 



CHAPTER XLY. 

GIVING THE FIRST TO THE LORD. 

" The first of the first fruits of the ground tliou shalt bring into 
the house of the Lord thy God." — Exodus xxiii: 19. 

It was a law with the Jews that they should give 
the first of what they had to the service of God. 
The first born child was to be specially consecrated 
to the Lord, and they were to bring to him the first 
fruits of the field and the first increase of their flocks 
and herds. 

It is very important, in order that we may be 
truly happy and make others happy, that we learn 
the lesson of unselfishness, the lesson of doing to 
others as we would have others do to us, the lesson 
of esteeming others better than ourselves. And God 
tried to teach this lesson to the Jews, by requiring 
them to give the first and best to some one beside 
themselves. 

My mother was very fond of crystals and all other 
beautiful things. She taught me to love them. 
When I was a boy my brother and I used to go 
occasionally to hunt for crystals. Sometimes we 
would find some very nice ones, but when we 
(187) 



188 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

brought thein home and cleaned them it was under- 
stood that mother was to have the first choice for her 
collection. The best ones were for her. 

Often, when I have found beautiful crystals in the 
Rocky Mountains, I have wished that my mother 
was alive, so that I could give the best to her, and 
have her to enjoy all of them with me. And then I 
remember that the crystals I fain would give her are 
poor worthless things compared with the matchless, 
resplendent gems in the walls of the New Jerusalem, 
upon which her eyes have feasted these many years. 
Perhaps she wishes that I was there to enjoy them 
with her. God helping me I will be sometime. 

It always pays to give freely. It pays to give the 
first and best to the Lord. When the Jews did that 
they were sure to be prospered. They had better 
crops, and their flocks and herds increased more rap- 
idly. All of God's promises, and God's providences, 
and God's laws worked together for their good. The 
windows of heaven were opened wide to pour bless- 
ings upon them. But when they tried to cheat the 
Lord by keeping back what was due him, or by giv- 
ing him the halt and lame and blind, then their crops 
failed, their cattle died, and everything went wrong. 

One of my sisters, who is very fond of crystals, 
and myself once went hunting for crystals of tour- 
maline. TThen we reached the locality, I got down 
among the rough rocks in a place where some one 



GIVING THE FIRST TO THE LORD. 189 

had blasted, and straightway I found a very beauti- 
ful crystal of tourmaline, finer than I had expected 
to find. I rather wanted it for my own collection, 
but I gave it to my sister, and of course she was 
pleased with it and has it yet. 

Did I lose anything by giving it away ? I thought 
not when, a few moments after, I reached my hand 
into a rough cavity and unexpectedly pulled out this 
splendid crystal of tourmaline which I think is worth 
ten dollars — the finest I ever found and one of the 
finest I ever saw. 

Just eight years after that my sister and myself 
happened to be at home together again, and we went 
to the same spot, and I found two more fine crystals, 
the first of which I gave to her. 

If you children will adopt the rule of giving the 
first and best to the Lord, I am sure you will be 
blessed and prospered. God says you will, and his 
promises never fail. 

" There is that scattereth and yet increaseth, and 
there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it 
tendeth to poverty." 

" The liberal soul shall be made fat ; and he that 
watereth shall be watered also himself." 

That is what God says in the Old Testament, and 
in the Xew Testament Christ says : 

"Give, and it shall be given unto you; good 
measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and 
running over, shall men give into your bosom. *' 



CHAPTER XLVI. 

CRYSTALS THAT REVEAL MYSTERIES. 

" The revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since the 
world began, but now is made manifest." — Romans xvi : 
25, 26. 

Ever since man began to look at the stars he has 
wondered what they were. The simple nursery 
rhyme : 

" Twinkle, twinkle little star, 
How I wonder what you are ! " 

has been the thought of men in all ages. And 
when men finally found out what the stars were, when 
they learned that they were immense globes of fire 
like our sun, but millions of millions of miles further 
away than the sun, then they began to wonder what 
they were made of. But some said, " Ah ! you can- 
not tell. They are too far away. You cannot go 
there to find out, and there is no way by which you 
can get pieces of them to analyze." So it was a 
great mystery what was in the stars, and what was 
in the sun, whether there was any iron there, or gold, 
or silver, or any of the things that make the beauti- 
ful crystals which we find in this world. It was a 
(190) 



CRYSTALS THAT REVEAL MYSTERIES. 191 

mystery that had been kept secret ever since the 
world began. 

And yet those stars were all this time sending 
messages to the world about what was in them. 
Every ray of light — every sunbeam and every star- 
beam — brought the news, only men couldn't read it. 
But finally they learned how to read the message, 
and the secret was at last revealed. And it was by 
the help of some of the crystals that are dug out of 
the ground that the secret was made known. 

They take glass lenses, which you know are made 
of the same substance as quartz crystals, and crys- 
tals of calcite and tourmaline cut and polished in a 
certain way, and with them they catch the sunbeam 
or the starbeam, and open it, and take it all apart, 
and read the message that it brings, and thus learn 
what the sun and the stars are made of. 

Is it not wonderful that crystals that grow in the 
dark earth, and that never see a ray of light until 
long after they are made, are so made that when 
they do see the light they can unravel its mystery, 
and tell to man the secret of the stars, the secret 
that for ages was not understood ? The clear crys- 
tals reveal starry secrets, but they could not do it 
if they were not clear. 

Ever since man was made the light of God's love 
has been shining upon the human race, but oh ! how 
little men understood God ! Thev wondered a great 



192 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

deal about him ; they had vain thoughts and imagi- 
nations, and many false ideas about him. The secret 
of the Lord, the real truth as to what he was, they 
did not understand ; and it was their own fault. 
They thought he was just like themselves. Their 
foolish hearts were darkened, so that they were not 
clear enough to let the light through. They changed 
the truth of God into a lie, and God had to give 
them up to vile affections. 

But by and by Jesus came, and he taught men 
what God was. When men came to him and said, 
" Show us the Father," he said, " He that hath seen 
me hath seen the Father. The Father is in me and 
I in him." And he taught men the great secret that 
God is love, that he loves all his creatures, and seeks 
to do them good. The great and mighty God is 
brought near to men by his son Jesus, whose soul 
was clear as crystal, and whose life shone with the 
light of God. 

And if you and I have clear souls, and are like 
Christ, and do all the good we can, we too can be 
used to reveal God to man, to show to others what 
the great and mighty God is, and to bring him near 
to others, as Christ did. " The secret of the Lord 
is with them that fear him. " 



CHAPTER XLVIL 

THE NAMES OF CRYSTALS. 

" Is not he rigidly named Jacob f for Tie hath supplanted me these 
two times." — Genesis xxvii: 36. 

Minerals are generally named from some pecu- 
liarity concerning them. Some take their name 
from the place where they were first found. A 
friend of mine discovered a new mineral near Pike's 
Peak and he named it Elpasoite, after El Paso 
County. Some take the name of the man who dis- 
covered them. Thomsonite is named after Dr. 
Thomson, and Thomsenolite is named after Dr. 
Thomsen. More frequently minerals take their 
names from some peculiar appearance, or from some 
quality that they possess, or some substance found 
in them. The diamond is named from a word that 
means unconquerable, or, the hardest. Selenite is 
named after the moon because it shines with a radi- 
ance like the moon. Phenacite is so called because 
it deceives us, being often mistaken for quartz. An- 
hydrite means without water. Feldspar means spar 
found in the field. Aqua-marine is the name of a 
kind of beryl that has the color of sea-water. As- 
bestus means a mineral that fire does not burn. Py- 
(193) 



194 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

rites is from a word that means fire, and is so called 
because it gives off a spark of fire when struck. 
Celestite is so named because of its beautiful sky- 
blue color. Barite is from a word that means heavy. 
Arsenicite is so called because it is about one half 
arsenic. Kem ember, then, that every mineral name 
has a meaning. 

And so have the names of boys and girls. Albert 
means bright ; Homer means a pledge ; Francis 
means free ; Charles means strong or manly ; John 
means gracious gift of God ; Theodore means gift 
of God ; Elizabeth means consecration to God ; Kate 
means pure ; Edith and Ada mean happiness ; Ella, 
Ellen, and Helen mean light ; Lucy means clear ; 
Emma means energetic, industrious ; Esther means 
a good portion ; Amelia means busy ; Margaret 
means pearl ; Agnes means chaste, pure ; Blanche 
means white ; Clara means bright ; Florence means 
flourishing ; Grace means favor ; Ida means God- 
like, and so on through the list. Every name has 
a meaning, good or bad. 

In former days they named children, as the Indi- 
ans still do, from some peculiarity of the child. 
Either the}' wanted to see what kind of a child it 
was going to be, or else they gave it a name which 
they thought was a prophecy of what the child 
would be. Esau thought his brother Jacob was 
rightly named. Jacob means a supplanter, and 



TEE XA HE 3 OF CRTS TALS. 195 

Jacob had supplanted Esau two times. But after 
Jacob was converted and learned how to prevail in 
prayer, then his name was changed to Israel, which 
means a soldier of God, or one who prevails. 

Jesus was named before he was born. An angel 
brought his name from heaven, where they knew 
that he was going to save his people from their sins, 
— and that is what Jesus means, a Savior. 

I do not suppose that any of you received your 
names because of any special trait of character. 
But suppose you should all lose your names some 
day, and an angel should come down and give you 
all new names, names that showed just what your 
character was, names that were given in plain 
English, and not in old Latin or Greek words that 
covered up the meaning, and which you could not 
understand unless you went to the dictionary. After 
you get your new names I will come and ask you 
the old familiar question, 'TThat is your name ? ' 

What is yours ( And you answer promptly and 
clearly, showing that you are not ashamed of it : 
My name is Truth. And yours ? Mine is Obedi- 
ence. And yours? Mine is Cheerfulness. And 
yours ? Patience. And yours ? Industry. And 
yours? and yours? and yours? Trust, Kindness, 
Forgiveness, Politeness, Courage, Faithfulness, 
Temperance. 

Good ! those are grand names, and I want you 



196 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

boys and girls all to come and see me. I want to 
become better acquainted with you. 

But who are those boys and girls hanging their 
heads, over in the corner ? Come, we want to know 
your names. What is yours ? 

"I don't want to tell." 

But you must. What is it ? 

c ' They said it was Liar, but I don't like that name. " 

Well, it cannot be changed until you stop telling 
lies and learn to speak the truth. 

And what is yours ? Disobedience. And yours ? 
Fretf ulness. And yours ? Laziness. And yours ? 
Suspicion. And yours ? and yours ? and yours ? 
Cruelty, Revenge, Carelessness, Rudeness, Intem- 
perance, Impurity, Thoughtlessness. O what names 
those are ! Go back into the corner and hang your 
heads, and see if you cannot deserve some better 
names. 

Now, children, "honest and true," what would 
you be called if you were named after your princi- 
pal trait of character ? Perhaps that is the name by 
which you are known in heaven. 

Let us all try to deserve the name Christian, for 
that is the best of all names, and we shall deserve 
that name if we belong to that great family in heaven 
and on earth that is named after Christ. 



CHAPTER XLVIIL 

FROST CRYSTALS. 

"Holy garments * * * for glory and for beauty."— Exodus 
xxviii: 2. 

Who that lives in a frosty climate has not taken 
delight in watching frost crystals on the window 
panes? The windows are all clear at night, but 
when you look at them in the morning they are 
covered with the most delicate, fairy-like, boughs and 
branches, and whole forests of trees or wonderful 
bouquets of flowers. And every linib and leaf and 
flower is made up of clear crystals which the night 
before were floating in the air as invisible vapor. 

On some very cold days if you look closely you 
can almost see the delicate crystals shoot across the 
glass as they are forming. If you look with a 
magnifying glass you see a perfect wilderness of 
crystal bars and crystal boughs. 

As Joseph Cook was looking from the car windows 
at the pine trees in one of the open parks of Colorado, 
he said to a fellow passenger: " It looks as though 
an artist had arranged those trees." 

"An Artist did do it," was the answer. The 
(197) 



198 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

window panes on frosty mornings look as though an 
artist of wondrous skill had been at work upon them. 
And it was an artist that gave them such beauty. 
Some call that artist Jack Frost, I prefer to think 
of him as God working through his law of crystal- 
lization. 

And that Artist works in other places. Sometimes 
he fills the ground, and sometimes he covers the ice 
with frost crystals. And sometimes he hangs myriads 
of them on all the trees and bushes, and when the 
sun shines on them we seem to be in a fairy world of 
crystals. 

I was in a mine once at an altitude of nearly four- 
teen thousand feet above the sea. It was where the 
ground is frozen the year round. As I went into 
the mine I found that it was covered thick with frost 
crystals, some of which were very large. There 
were millions of them, and they shone and sparkled 
like so many diamonds. It was one of the most 
wonderful sights that I ever saw. 

And sometimes the same Artist makes forest-like 
tracings on the rock with a substance that does not 
melt so easily as ice, and then we call it forest rock. 
Sometimes he spreads the little trees and branches 
through the clear rock, and then we call it moss 
agate. Sometimes he paints it in beautiful colors 
on plates of mica, Sometimes he makes beautiful 
sprays and branches and trees out of copper and 



FROST CRYSTALS. 19& 

silver and gold. I have some crystallized gold that 
spreads out like leaves and branches. 

Now why does that Artist make all these beauti- 
ful forms ? For the same reason that God makes the 
beautiful sky, and clouds, and mountains, and flow- 
ers, and faces, and for the same reason that Solomon 
was told to cover the house of the Lord with precious 
stones, for heauty, and for the same reason that God 
told Moses to make holy garments for Aaron, the 
priest, for glory and for oeauty. The beautiful 
garments, the costly tabernacle, and the magnificent 
temple, were to glorify God, and teach men the 
beauty of holiness and the beauty of God. 

The heavens declare the glory of God, and so do 
the frost crystals on the window pane. And when I 
cannot look through the window to see God's glory 
in the stars, I will look at the window and see his 
glory in the frost crystals. 

Some people pretend to be very practical, and they 
have no use for anything that cannot be turned into 
dollars and cents. Such an one was the man of 
whom the poet says: 

"A primrose by the river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more/' 

u What is it good for ? " is the question that such 
people are always asking. Some things are good 



200 CLEAR A8 CRYSTAL. 

for eating ; some are good for dollars and cents, and 
some are good " for glory and for beauty." If God 
sends an artist to paint beautiful pictures on our 
windows, it is just as much a shame not to notice 
them as it would be not to notice the pictures which 
an artist friend hung on our walls. 

And if God is willing to send an artist to make 
beautiful pictures out of crystals, on the windows, 
for glory and for beauty, I think, yea, I know that 
he is also willing, if we will let him, to paint beauti- 
ful pictures out of the Christian graces, on our hearts 
and in our lives, for our beauty and his glory. 

Jesus in the heart and life is God's artist who is 
willing to clothe us with the beautiful garments of 
salvation and make our lives glorious with the beauty 
of holiness and the oil and joy of gladness. 



CHAPTER XLIX. 

CRYSTALS IN ACID. 

" Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations."— J ames 
i:2. 

Some crystals are covered with dirt when they 
are first found, and we have to put them into water 
and rub them well with a stiff brush before we can 
see the real beauty of the crystals. And sometimes 
they are covered with iron rust, or with some other 
foreign substance, that adheres so closely to the 
crystal that water will not wash it off. Then we 
have to put the crystals into some strong acid, like 
sulphuric, or muriatic, or nitric acid, and let the 
acid eat off the rust and impure substances. When 
they are eaten off, the crystal, which before looked 
rough and homely, appears in its real beauty as God 
first made it. 

But when we clean crystals in this way we have 
to be very careful not to put them into an acid that 
will eat the crystals themselves and destroy them. 
Some acids will entirely destroy some crystals, while 
other acids will only clean them. If I put a crystal 
of lime into sulphuric acid the acid will soon destroy 
(201) 



202 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

it. But if I put into that acid a crystal of quartz 
that has a coating of lime, the lime will be eaten off 
and the crystal left unharmed. The other day I put 
some dirty looking copper into an acid to clean it. 
The copper was soon cleaned and I took it out just in 
time. If I had left it much longer the copper would 
have been destroyed. So you see we have to be 
careful not to destroy our nice crystals when we are 
trying to clean them. 

Our souls have on them more or less of the dirt 
and rubbish, the iron-rust and impure coatings of this 
world. We are in God's hands. We belong as 
Christians to him, and he wants to cleanse us, to free 
us from impurities, that we may shine in his king- 
dom and reflect his glory, that we may be as "corner 
stones polished after the similitude of a palace. " 

So he cleanses us with the washing of water by 
the word ; he sanctifies us with the truth — and his 
word is truth — and when that is not sufficient he 
puts us into the strong acids of temptation and 
trial and tribulation and trouble — four t's, remember 
— in order that they may take away from us the 
iron-rust of this world. 

And that is why we ought to rejoice, to count it 
all joy, when we fall into divers temptations, "know- 
ing this, that the trying of your faith worketh 
patience." We are not to rush into these tempta- 
tions, but if God puts us there we are to rejoice 



CRYSTALS IN ACID. 203 

in it. The acid tests the soul, and purifies it, and 
causes it to shine more brightly. 

But some shrink back, and are afraid, and say: 
"01 fear that these trials will destroy me; they will 
eat up my hope, my faith, and my very soul! " No, 
my friend, God will see to that. He knows just 
how much you can stand, and he says that he will 
not sutler you to be tempted above what you are 
able to bear. You can safely trust yourself in such 
trials as he leads you into. 

"When through the deep waters I call thee to go, 
The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow; 
For I will be with thee thy trouble to bless, 
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress. 

" When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, 
My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply; 
The flame shall not hurt thee, I only design 
Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine." 

The diamond is never eaten or hurt by any acid 
whatever. The acids can clean it but they cannot 
consume it. If Christ is in your soul, if he is your 
adamantine strength and your everlasting portion, 
temptations and trials can cleanse you but they cannot 
harm you ; they can test you, but they cannot de- 
stroy you. 



CHAPTER L. 

CRYSTAL GEMS IN HEAVEN. 

" The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all 
manner of precious stones. The -first foundation was jas- 
per; the second sapphire; the third, chalcedony; the fourth, 
emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, 
chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, 
chrysoprase; the eleventh, jacinth; the twelfth, amethyst. 
And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; and each one of the 
several gates was of one pearl; and the street of the city was 
pure gold, as it were transparent glass." — Revelation xxi: 
19-21. 

This is the longest text I have ever used for a 
children's sermon. I wish it was longer, for it is all 
about that beautiful city, our heavenly home, full of 
many mansions, which Christ is preparing for his 
followers. You will notice that the Apostle John 
makes much use of precious stones in describing that 
place. He names twelve different kinds that are 
used in the foundation walls, and then speaks of gates 
of pearl and streets of gold. 

I have in this little box specimens of those precious 
stones, and also a pearl and a crystal of pure gold. 
These specimens are small. I can take a magnifying 
glass and make them look much larger. Suppose I 



CRYSTAL OEMS IN HEAVEN. 205 

had a very powerful magnifying glass and could 
make them look like great big stones, how magnifi- 
cent they would be, and what millions of dollars 
they would be worth! They would look then some- 
thing like what John saw in his vision of heaven. 

Beautiful as these precious stones are I think there 
will be something in heaven a great deal more beauti- 
ful, not only larger and more beautiful crystals of the 
same kind, than we ever saw here, but also gems of 
which we never heard before, of such beauty and glory 
as would dazzle our eyes if we saw them in this life. 

And what makes me think so is because the most 
precious things in this world are used in heaven for 
the most common purposes. The Jewish High 
Priest had a wonderful breast-plate made for him. 
It was made of very costly material, and on it were 
four rows, each row having three precious stones. 
There were also gold rings and chains connected with 
it. Now in heaven they take those precious stones 
and use them to adorn foundation walls, and they use 
the gold for paving the streets. If they use our 
precious stones and pure gold for such things in 
heaven, then I think that what they have for their 
precious stones there, to adorn their rooms and per- 
sons, must be something more beautiful than we ever 
dreamed of. If the dust of our streets was gold-dust, 
as it is in heaven, I do not think we would find so 
much fault as we do now with our dust storms. 



206 CLEAR AS CRYSTAL. 

Do you say that there are no precious stones in 
heaven, that what John says is all figurative lan- 
guage ? Well, have it so if you wish, but the words 
mean something, and they must mean that the beau- 
ties and joys and glories of heaven far surpass any- 
thing that we have in this life, and that the most 
precious things here are very common there, and that 
the really precious things of heaven are something 
far beyond our utmost expectations. 

There is an oriental story of a king for whose 
daughter a wonderful palace was built in a single 
night by some fairy power. The king was told that 
he might adorn one room. He was very wealthy, 
and he spent millions of dollars in adorning that one 
room with all manner of precious stones of great 
size and beauty, and with vast quantities of gold. 
It took him a long time, but at last it was finished, 
and then in a single night, the fairy power adorned all 
the other rooms with such wondrous gems, large and 
clear and of marvellous beauty, that the other room 
looked very poor and commonplace by their side. 

We have some good things and some beautiful 
things in this world, but oh, how poor and how 
commonplace they will seem by the side of those 
mansions in our Father's house, whose spacious 
rooms the King of Glory, with the riches of the 
universe at his command, is preparing for them who 
shall be heirs of glory ! 



HOME DUTIES. 



By REV. R. T. CROSS, 

Pastor of West Denver Congregational Church. 



Subjects: 

Duties of Husbands. 

Duties of Wives. 

Duties of Parents. 

Duties of Children. 

Duties of Brothers. 
Duties of Sisters. 

Duty of Family Worship. 

Method of Family Worship. 

Duty of Getting a Home, 

And How To Get It. 



This Book is specially adapted for presentation by 
Ministers or others, to newly married couples. A large 
reduction to Ministers who order a number of copies. 

Sent by mail postpaid, on receipt of price. 

Bound in Cloth, 75 cents.. 

" " Paper, - - - 40 " 



ADDRESS : 

REV. R. T. CROSS, 

DENVER, COLO. 



CRYSTALS. 



Clear, Smoky, and Opaque, 

Large, Medium-Sized, and Small, 

Precious, Semi-Precious and Common, 
Red ; White, and Blue, 

Black, Green and Yellow, 

From the Rocky Mountains and elsewhere, 

can be had at reasonable prices, 

by addressing 

i=?e:\z. re. t. c:recz>=>s, 

DENVER, COLORADO. 



A fine collection for sale. 

Co rrespon dence Solicited. 



&1/ 



